Re: defaults randomly being overwritten?

[Tim Harrison]

Jeff Teunissen wrote:

> Well, it will always have the ability. The problem is that it's happening
> without an explicit action asking for it. :)

It would only always have the ability if the application were able to 
effectively say "remove everything in the defaults directory", as 
opposed to "modify the defaults file for my application".

> That said, separate files make it more difficult for bad things to happen.
> Separate files also make it more difficult for good things to happen
> correctly. The question is, is the benefit greater than the danger?

Yes.  Randomly wiping out people's configurations is a Bad Thing[tm].

From a primarily non-coder point of view, I can't see how having 
separate files for individual application defaults is all that 
difficult.  Aside from having to code for that situation, the benefit of 
 not allowing one application to destroy all defaults (which is a royal 
pain in the gluteus) is a significant one.

As a user, if you configured your system to do [A], and, seemingly at 
random, your system decided to clear that information, and do [B], you'd 
be furious.  I certainly would be.  Make all obligatory comments about 
Windows here. ;)

Once again, I don't know if this is a GNUstep bug, or an application 
bug, or both.  I just think there could be better protection for user 
defaults, which would not cause more problems than it would solve.

> No, it wouldn't be beneficial if NSGlobalDomain were read-only -- how
> would one change it without manual editing?
>
> Preferences modules, for example, need to edit the global domain.

You will note that I didn't say "make NSGlobalDomain read-only", but I 
understand what you mean.  Point taken.


--

Tim Harrison
tim@linuxstep.org
http://www.linuxstep.org/