> A lot of developers write magic numbers to the registry so that when
> your trial period ends, uninstalling and reinstalling the application
> will not reset your trial period.

Is this method really used? There are programs to record all 
reads/writes to the registry, so you really can delete all the keys 
created. Or you just restore a backup of the registry to start the trial 
again. I suspect they are a bit more cunning than this.

>>> 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.
>
> Okay, but why compile them?  It's not like drive space is a scarce
> resource anymore.

Speed? At least on Windows the registry is accessed pretty much 
continuously, you want it to be as fast as possible so that means a 
binary format.

> That's mostly the uninstaller's fault.  I suppose there's a utility that
> allows you to record the registry changes made by an installer, so that
> when the utility is uninstalled you can follow up and scrub the registry
> completely.

That's dangerous though, because another program might have been 
installed since that changes or uses one of the settings the original 
program created/changed. If you go down this route (as some large 
companies do for custom automatic installer/uninstallers) then you need 
to do a lot of checking and testing for each program.

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