What files need to be found? Can the locations be specified by
command-line arguments or environment variables? If not, that should
probably be allowed anyway.
at startup, the GUI checks whether a configuration file exists and - if not - copies the default configuration file into the home directory of the user. But I think, instead of doing that, I can just define default settings hardcoded in a function and write that to a file, so the need for a default configuration file gets eliminated.
The icons are compiled into the binary.
PS: What about the GUI flag for octave, so octave can determine whether a GUI is available or not? It should not be a big deal to add the code to launch the texinfo browser in the GUI, we just need to agree upon a flag name.