solution?

[Michael Shigorin]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 11:35:34AM +0100, Javier Monteagudo wrote:
> I think a perfect but simple aproach would be the one firefox
> has taken.

I've thought of this analogy but didn't come to same result.
Even if Galeon was my personal GNOME2-killer app, and watching 
"Mozilla Suite vs Firefox" has given quite a few things to think.

> The basic browser has the main proferences/features needed in a
> browser, if you need something else you can use the extensions
> interface to code it.

Maybe... but Firefox is somewhat like Emacs -- not that much of
a browser but a platform.  Desktop environment is kind of
platform, too, but successful examples differ (to me, again).

Ah.  Seems got it.

With Firefox, you can install extensions globally or locally.

When installing globally, it's an administrative act requiring
administrative privileges -- but resulting in something
administratable (upgradeable with packages, even with all the
pain of packaging Mozilla products and extensions for them...
oh well).

When installing locally, each user can have his own mess of
*code* (and code versions).  It's generally unsupportable by 
a system administrator.

So it's a question of whether personal data suffices, or personal
code is really needed.

> If a dev thinks a feature is useful but not apropiate for n00bs
> he could code it as a python extension & not include it by
> default. The power user would know how to add this feature to
> the app & start using it. If every gnome dev agreed on this
> eventually every part of gnome could be extensible for the
> power user & still remain easy to use on a default installation
> for n00bs.

Well at least I find the userlevel approach more integrated.
Extensions are good when they solve particular problems, and
on desktop as a whole the problem is "the lack of advanced
buttons" for those who need them and "the overwhelming qty
of knobs" to usual users.

<deprecated reason="see above">
Maybe installing a hypothetical gnome2-userlevel package which
would unlock those settings (extending the basic infrastructure
with what's needed to handle that, if not a simple quantized
variable and maybe a "fly hours" counter)...
</deprecated>

I just don't know of a way to pull in such "advanced" extension
packages for every package installed which has them provided
when such setting would change, and suspect it to be a hideous
mess to try to manage such mechanism both system-wide and
per-user.

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike at altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/