On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, [ISO-8859-15] Andr� Malo wrote:A >30 KB default config, which nobody outside this circle here really understands, isn't helpful - especially for beginners.
I agree that the current config file is too big and ugly. But let's be a little careful here. There needs to be a balance. Detailed config files do help users understand the capabilities of the server and make it much easier to activate features.
How about separating the "example" and "default" configs? Make the default config short, but provide an example config with all the meat that can be easily cut-and-pasted.
For example, I think <IfModule> lines in a config file are usually a bad idea, since the webserver should complain loudly if a needed module isn't present, instead of just ignoring the situation. Because the example config is serving as a sort of documentation for all these modules, but yet still has to work on whatever the user happens to build, it has to include those <IfModule>s, and it then encourages people to use them in a bad way.
- Can we get rid of the non-unix mpm stuff from the default config. (Don't mean to offend os/2 and beos (and possibly netware), but they are really superfluous and confusing for most people.)
+1 to your proposal in the meantime (given my proposal above). I'd probably just get rid of all of the per-mpm stuff even. The mpms should have reasonable default values, so unless the admin needs to make a specific change, there should be no need for any of those directives in the default config.
- Can we get rid of most of the AddLanguage/AddCharset directives? They are a constant source of bug reports, and I really can't imagine that many people use them as-is. (Do people really name their files index.html.utf32be.el?)
+1
