This is the mail archive of the cygwin-apps@cygwin.com mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

RE: setup size prefs


My main point:

/EMPHASIZING/
What I tried to say, in an obviously "too short" way, in my initial posting
was this;

 Allow installing cygwin in a scripted way by allowing predefinition of all
settings - that are indeed variable - in a file that is EASY to handle.

This would IMO be very convinient, at least as long as the command line
launch - and operation - of setup is in a "half done" state.

The remainder is long and winding and contains multiple replies...
Feel free to skip it.
/Hannu


Gary R. Van Sickle AKA c*g*i*-apps-owner@c*g*in.com wrote:
> [snip]
<SNIP>
>> ..and please, if it isn't that much work:
>>  use argv[0] as base for the pathname where you store these values.
>
> Not a good choice if you have the app living on your desktop.

You do keep (COPIES of?) installed software on the desktop?
IMO that is a place for a shortcut, not an installed software package.

> Windows has established places for info like this, and APIs to get
> the paths to them regardless of how things may be installed.
> Something like this (if it's a file) goes somewhere like
> "C:\Documents and Settings\{All Users|Current User}\Application
> Data\Cygwin Setup\" (don't quote me, but that's
> the idea).

 I can live with that. Far better than the current "<Last typed install
location DRIVE>:\cygwin\etc\*" (Discovered that one during my reinstall
exercises recently.)


Next posting:

Brian Dessent AKA cygwin-apps-owner@c*g*i*.com wrote:
> "Gary R. Van Sickle" wrote:

I wrote:
>>> (In a *.txt file, please. I'd love if it was styled as *.ini)
>>> This creates a nice possibility to supply setup w defaults of
>>> your own.
>>
>> Mmmmmhmhmhhhmhhmmm....  The real Windows way of doing this is by
>> putting all such settings in the registry, in the appropriate places
>> (analogous to the paths above).

 Windows style isn't always the best. Cygwin isn't much "Windows" in other
ways, why should it be in this regard?

> Yes and that's how it should be done.  Store the size and position in
> the registry.  That's what it's there for, that's what well-behaived
> programs do.  Like it or hate it, that's how windows is designed and
> making up some brain dead "custom ini file" is just wrong.

 Heh? ;-)  You didn't see farther than the tip of your nose. Read further
down where I try to explain why I did my proposal.

Counterstrike WRT what you said above:
If something is "brain dead" I'd say that keeping ALL "INI-files" (e.g the
registry, fonts and whatnot) in memory at once is;
 I have no facts to backup this, but this is how I "feel" that Windows
behaves - given less than a certain amount of memory. [W98: 128MB, W2K:
256MB, XP: 512MB(?) - the lowest amounts of RAM to make the machine usable.]
 Example: Install a few thousand fonts and realise that you need to increase
the amount of available RAM by a constant times the number of fonts. Before
you do, you can't go on using your machine as you're used to. And this is
before you even attempt to access any font.

> As far as defaults: WHAT?  Just run the program the first time, set it
> to the size you want, and that's it.  Is that *really* harder then
> making up some ini file with sizes and coordinates?  The whole point
> is that it saves its state so that you don't have to specify it each
> time.

 Agreed, given your assumptions/assertions about *why* it should be there
and nowhere else.


> If you really want to be able to programmatically do that, just
> use regtool.  e.g. "regtool set HKLM\Software\Cygwin setup\height
> 480". Don't go do something outside of the OS's idioms for how program
> settings are to be stored.  That's bad programming.

 ... and how do you use regtool? The man page, webhelp nor help output does
contain a single example that works.
 And then: BEFORE you've installed Cygwin it is HARD to use regtool.

> (You could make an argument for having the settings in a plain-text
> file under /etc since setup is half-Cygwin half-Windows, but I still
> feel the registry is the right place for windows program settings.
> ini files have been deprecated since win95 was released.)

 That is the way it seems to be implemented right now, at least partly. As
cygwin might be installed almost anywhere; these settings are hard to find
(i.e. they don't exist) *before* cygwin setup has been run _the first time_.


>
> Brian

/Hannu E K Nevalainen, B.Sc. EE Microcomputer systems            --72-->

** mailing list preference; please keep replies on list **

-- printf("LocalTime: UTC+%02d\n",(DST)? 2:1); --
--END OF MESSAGE--


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]