GNOME 3.2 ideas and plans

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

With GNOME 3.0 going into code freeze any day now, it is high time
that we start looking beyond 3.0 and start collecting ideas and making
plans for what comes next. To that end, I have collected a list of
things that have fallen off the 3.0 train at one point or another, as
well as some other things that might be nice to put on the roadmap.
Some of these have designs and/or working implementations, others or
just ideas.

I'd like to encourage everybody to chime in with their own ideas and
plans for GNOME 3.2.


Matthias


Shell / core stuff:

- 'Finding and reminding' in the shell. There are fairly detailed
writeups about this, and the Zeitgeist team and Federico have been
working on something that at least looks similar.
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards/FindingAndReminding
http://people.gnome.org/~federico/news-2011-02.html#zeitgeist-in-gnome-shell


- Application menu / Actions / Jumplists. This got tied up in the
back-and-forth over GApplication and never really got finished.
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-February/msg00086.html


- Accessibility: As Jon said in the discussion about the Universal
Access menu, we don't really have a story to tell here. Still not in a
position where we can turn on toolkit a11y  by default, and the shell
a11y leaves a lot to be desired too.


- On-screen keyboard: to really work, the osk needs to be integrated
in the shell; there's existing designs for this.
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards/ScreenKeyboard


- Tablets / touch / scrollbars: Make GNOME work on touch devices.


- System dialogs: We got gnome-session and polkit dialogs converted,
gnome-keyring is next on the list. Work-in-progress patches exist.


- Device hotplug: There was the idea (and some mockups) for moving
this into either notifications or shell-style dialogs.

- Storage: Might be nice to turn palimpsest into a control-center
panel that covers simple cases.


- Sharing: We have rygel, and gnome-user-share, and vino but no
finished design for how this is going to appear in a control-center
panel


- Login screen: gdm got some facelift, but it is still pretty much a
gnome2 login screen. We have a design for a shell-style greeter.
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards/LoginScreen


- Network: this has received a lot of effort recently, but the
control-center network panel will clearly need to be fleshed out more
completely for 3.2.
https://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/Network



Applications:


- We don't have a good contracts story. There were discussions around
it (folks, web accounts, etc). It would be good to improve that in
3.2.


- There was a proposal by the epiphany team to look at epiphany /
shell integration.


- Sadly, empathy is not a great chat application; with chat being such
a prominent feature in 3.0, we really should be doing much better
here.