Re: user preferences was: NCSA X Mosaic 0.5 released

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Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 15:23:01 +0100
From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>
Message-id: <9301281423.AA03450@www3.cern.ch>
To: Dan Connolly <connolly@pixel.convex.com>
Subject: Re: user preferences was: NCSA X Mosaic 0.5 released 
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Reply-To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch

>  Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 10:59:43 CST
>  From: Dan Connolly <connolly@pixel.convex.com>
>  

...
>  But Tim: about this user preferences stuff. I disagree with your
>  strategy:
>  

...
>  X application should use the X resource database to get user
>  preferences. Folks can build their X resource database from
>  system-wide app-defaults files, files in their home directory,
>  environment variables, command-line-args, etc.
>  

>  Works good.
>  

>  I've seen you write a couple times about having a user preference
>  system that worked the same on the NeXT, Mac, X boxes, etc.
>  

>  Making them look the same from an API would be great.

We agree about that.

>  But don't make users adapt to a new WWW scheme for doing user  
preferences.
>  NeXT folks should use the NeXT user preference database, just like  
all
>  they do for their other tools. Mac folks should find  
"Preferences..."
>  under the edit menu. X folks know how to muck with .Xdefaults and  
xrdb.
>  (though a friendlier UI to the x resource database is badly  
needed).


Absolutely.  I didn't mean to advocate a and actual .rc file,
I totally agree that the mechanism should be the natural local one  
one in each environment. Like look and feel should also always be  
local.

Tim