The Windows registry. Apparently a lot of people hate it. Tom Kyte 
refers to it as "the Microsoft copy-protection system" (which is odd, 
considering it has absolutely nothing to do with copy-protection...) 
Apparently it's a *really* unpopular system.

The Unix way has always been for programs to populate your home 
directory with thousands of .rc files, each and every one of them in a 
different randomly-designed file format.

But now, there is a new hope for a unified configuration system. They 
call it "Gsettings". And the hilarious thing is that it is COMPLETELY 
ISOMORPHIC TO... the Windows registry.

It consists of a binary file containing a hierarchical tree of named 
folders, containing named keys, which easy have a value of a certain 
well-defined type. (Usually "integer" or "string".) Changing one of 
these settings has immediate effect on the owning application. And, for 
the most part, different application's keys are jumbled up in a random, 
haphazard manner.

...EXACTLY like the Windows registry.

Yes, it seems the GNU folks hate the Windows registry SO MUCH that they 
went out and added an exact reimplementation of it to their own 
software. :-P So much irony!



In fairness, it's not /completely/ identical. The folders are called 
"keys" under Windows, whereas Gsettings calls them "schemas". Both 
systems store this stuff in a binary file, but Gsettings loads the key 
definitions from XML files and "compiles" them into binary. Unlike the 
Windows registry, each key has a textual description (which is 
frequently very unhelpful), and a default value to which you can reset 
the key. Oh, and most keys for selecting options use text strings rather 
than weird code numbers. Also, the Windows registry supports storing 
stuff in multiple different "hives", whereas Gsettings apparently does not.

But apart from all this... totally identical. :-P

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