Re: lynx-dev Config file reader [PATCH]

[Mike Castle]

Amazingly enough Klaus Weide said:
> Some configuration values can be rather arbitrary strings, and
> you don't need quotes around them (which makes things simpler
> if the strings themselves contain quotes).  LIST_FORMAT: is a good
> example where spaces are significant.  If you relax the syntax
> now, you have to treat some things specially, and introducing new
> such options in the future will be more complicated.

I've been giving some thought to the configuration file stuff for a while
now.

How much change is acceptable for the next minor release?

I have a rough overall plan for redoing how configurations are done.
Hopefully something that would make adding new configurations easier and
provide a lot more orthogonality between the user configuration file and
system wide configuration file while still providing backwards
compatibility for however long we'd be willing to keep it.  Ideally, new
installations would use a lynxrc generated by lynx itself then placed into
a central location and modified for local use.

Basically, I was thinking a configuration table accessed via a series
of api's for setting/retrieving the values instead of global variables.
Also, the ability the recognize the differences between values loaded from
system configuration file, local configuration files, and command line
options.  We could possibly minimize the size of the user configuration
file by saving only values different from global configuration.  In the
options menu, we could mark items that have runtime values set on the
command line that are different from those set in the configuration file,
allowing the user the ability to keep the current runtime value, or choose
a different one to save into the configuration file.  Additionally, we
could perhaps have a way of other instances of lynx detect that a new
config file has been saved, and automatically load those values so that
they take immediate effect.

Actually, now that I think about it, even the global vars don't have to be
changed.  The table could reference which global var to tweak, just the
area for setting runtime values from command line, options menu, and
configuration files would need to be changed.

Thoughts?
mrc
-- 
       Mike Castle       Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly
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