PalmOS-like data storage

[Bryan Larsen]

> As a developer of one of a few profile managers (profiles) for Palm OS 
> Treos I suggest following:
> 
> 1/ to take profiles seriously. It's a must on a smartphone

I use a smartphone, but I don't use profiles.  I'd hardly call it a 
must, but I can certainly see how it would be useful, and I certainly 
wouldn't complain if it was implemented!

> 2/ to create a unified profile manager support/API. In fact it's 
> impossible to create a fully profile driven environment on Treo just 
> because of lack of this API. Every of 20000+ apps for Treo has its own 
> way how to store related configuration data and there is no way how to 
> change this now after so many apps have been created without a profile 
> manager in mind...

If you do add profiles, yes, there should be a common API.  If, however, 
you don't add profiles,  don't add the API.

In generally, if there's an API for something, but the developers of the 
API didn't use it (or didn't work closely with somebody using it)

* the API will be poorly designed
* the API will be very buggy

In the closed source world, that's better than nothing.

But we have a huge advantage, we're open source.  If you make a profile 
manager, you can add profile support yourself for a few key apps, and 
the rest will follow over time if you do it right.

Just think to yourself, "What would Linus do?"

Bryan

P.S. keeping data structures profile friendly to prevent a nasty 
migration in the future is a darn good idea, though.