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design:profile-manager [2011/10/09 15:22] ochosidesign:profile-manager [2011/12/11 23:45] – [Profile selector on each setting dialog] jsakkine
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-=== Profile Manager ===+==== Profile Manager ===
 + 
 +The Xfce4-profile-manager can be used to configure, apply, import and export 'settings-profiles'
 +These profiles contain settings of different applications across the spectrum of the xfce desktop. 
 + 
 +=== Rationale === 
 +Xfce can be quite complicated to configure. There are nearly endless possibilities, but this can mean a problem to new users. Especially if you want to configure xfce for a specific task, it can be difficult to configure xfce for a specific task. 
 + 
 +The profile-manager allows users to share their settings, export profiles and re-use them on different systems. Also, distributions can provide profiles specifically tailored for specific use-cases. Like a 'thin' profile that disables all the fancy resource-intensive settings, and a 'fat' profile that has all the pretty gui-stuff people love these days.
  
 == Mockups == == Mockups ==
 +
 +=== Settings dictionary ===
 +Settings are not always easy to understand. For example: '{xfwm4}/general/use_compositing' is not something a user would come up with himself if he wants to enable or disable the compositing feature of xfce. To solve this problem, the profile-manager needs some sort of settings-dictionary. A dictionary that maps '{xfwm4}/general/use_compositing' to and from a user-friendly name 'Enable window compositing'.
 +
 +=== Backup / Restore ===
 +One of the main problems that users experience with xfce is that somehow they changed settings without realizing it. With the nr 1 example, the session. It happens quite often that people have saved their session without a running xfce4-panel.
 +Explaining to a user how to return xfce to the desired state proves difficult, it would be nice if users can save a backup of their settings, and restore if they choose to.
 +
 +==== Proposals ====
 +
 +==== Profile selector on each setting dialog ====
 +
 +Every setting dialog would have a profile selector. Selecting a profile would restore the related setting values to those of that profile. This would be a kind of robust equivalent to KDEs "Defaults" button.