I hope everyone can agree that the etc situation is coming to a head.
And that we would benefit from a "uniform configuration format" (UCF) to
ease the development of new GUI based configuration tools and simplify
and standardize the format of existing file formats. Currently you can't
manually edit most of these files if you use a GUI editor because of its
inability to parse these documents lucidly (and understandably so). I
suggest the development and optional adoption of a service that writes
and stores these configuration files and manages the etc in an automated
and lucid fashion. The xml based schema will allow hand editing of the
xml files at any time but will most likely require a manual reread of
thechanges after hand editing (acceptable because of the advanced
operation of hand editing). Such a system of management can and should
provide a distribution and desktop environment independent method of
managing ALL configuration information (system-wide (etc) and userlevel
(~/)).
If there is sincere interest i will be happy to compose a first draft or
scour the web for a jumping off point and adapt it to our
specifications. I will slap up a wiki and we can collectively develop
the standards over the next few weeks. I think that such a development
will single handedly improve the ease of development and usability of
linux on the desktop and in the data center. This isnt an overly
complicated initiative and from what i can tell and its necessity and
improvements will far outweigh the development effort.
Recap:
I am proposing the development of a document that sets out a
distribution and desktop indepentent standardized method of system-wide
and user based configueration information storage including the location
of the files and the format of their contents.
Best Wishes,
Michael Favia
Insites Incorporated
