Preferences Vs Settings

[scottr]

I noticed in the sandbox are two interesting packages, org.springframework.richclient.preferences and org.springframework.richclient.settings. Both seem to offer classes to simplify the setting and retrieving of application and user settings/preferences.

These two packages seem to address overlapping problem scopes, and I was wondering if there are any plans to merge the two together?

regards,
Scott

[pdbruycker]

The structure is the following:

- settings package: contains everything that has to do with storing and loading settings (user and internal settings)
- preferences package: contains the preference dialog, and preferecepages for building a preference dialog. (and using the classes from the settings package for storing and retrieving user settings)

Internal settings cover widget state, window size, ...
User settings cover the application wide settings, that affect the behaviour of the program (such as a working directory, proxy settings, ...)

These two packages are under heavy development, and will likely undergo some changes. But I'm working on it.

Hope this helps,

Peter

[scottr]

The structure is the following:

- settings package: contains everything that has to do with storing and loading settings (user and internal settings)
- preferences package: contains the preference dialog, and preferecepages for building a preference dialog. (and using the classes from the settings package for storing and retrieving user settings)

Internal settings cover widget state, window size, ...
User settings cover the application wide settings, that affect the behaviour of the program (such as a working directory, proxy settings, ...)

The reason I asked was that the settings package provides an implementation that stores the settings via the java.util.preferences API, whereas the preferences package only supplies one that stores preferences in a properties file.

I notice that you said that the preferences package would use the settings classes to store/retrieve user preferences. This was what I was driving at in my original email, since the current classes don't. But I can see you had that in mind anyway.

Scott

[pdbruycker]

You're correct. I have on my local computer a version of the preferences package that uses the settings package for storing and retrieving settings, I'll check it in as soon as I can.

The implementation in the preferences package that stores prefs in a properties file is obsolete, as it doesn't provide hierarchical organization of settings.

peter