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24 <a name="idp13278416"></a>Conceptual differences</h2></div></div></div>
26 Conceptually, GConf and GSettings are fairly similar. Both
27 have a concept of pluggable backends. Both keep information
28 about keys and their types in schemas. Both have a concept of
29 mandatory values, which lets you implement lock-down.
32 There are some differences in the approach to schemas. GConf
33 installs the schemas into the database and has API to handle
34 schema information (<code class="function">gconf_client_get_default_from_schema()</code>,
35 <code class="function">gconf_value_get_schema()</code>, etc). GSettings on the other hand
36 assumes that an application knows its own schemas, and does
37 not provide API to handle schema information at runtime.
38 GSettings is also more strict about requiring a schema whenever
39 you want to read or write a key. To deal with more free-form
40 information that would appear in schema-less entries in GConf,
41 GSettings allows for schemas to be 'relocatable'.
44 One difference in the way applications interact with their
45 settings is that with GConf you interact with a tree of
46 settings (ie the keys you pass to functions when reading
47 or writing values are actually paths with the actual name
48 of the key as the last element. With GSettings, you create
49 a GSettings object which has an implicit prefix that determines
50 where the settings get stored in the global tree of settings,
51 but the keys you pass when reading or writing values are just
52 the key names, not the full path.
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