You mention Messaging: What are thoughts on the work Ubuntu has done with notify-OSD? > Subject: Re: Request for comment (GNOME Shell team): release date for GNOME 3.0 > From: otaylor redhat com > To: vuntz gnome org > Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 15:45:17 -0500 > CC: release-team gnome org; gnome-shell-list gnome org > > On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 17:11 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote: > > Hi, > > > > The release team is gathering comments from various teams to get a > > proper idea of which of March or September 2010 is more appropriate for > > the release of GNOME 3.0. The decision for the release date is following > > what we set in the 3.0 planning document [1]: we want 3.0 to be out in > > 2010, but we also want to make sure that 3.0 is rock-solid; your input > > will help us take an informed decision. > > > > It'd be great if someone could summarize the status of the work that is > > being done in GNOME Shell, and how March or September would work for > > you. (Oh, and I know Owen sent a mail to d-d-l, but let's pretend I > > didn't see it ;-)) > > What's there now > ================ > > GNOME Shell as it exists now is certainly usable; the major > functionality of using a desktop are there - switching between windows > and applications, launching new applications, accessing your recent > documents, etc. > > And I think the basic technical architecture of > Clutter+Mutter+GObject-Introspection+_javascript_ has been well > validated. > > What still needs work > ===================== > > The two big things on our plate right at the moment: > > Messaging: > > One of the important components of the GNOME Shell design is its > interaction with notifications and with messaging. > > We've just started in on the implementation of this now, and the > initial progress is promising, but there's going to be quite a > bit of work to fine-tune the interaction and figure out how > apps participate in this. > > App browsing > > Right now, the shell basically regurgitates the GNOME menus in > a slightly different form when you go to browse for applications > beyond those that are shown as your favorites. > > We're currently working on figuring out a better ways of presenting > this browsing activity and tying it in with searching. > > Beyond this: > > Document browsing > > There's no big picture story about how you access and find your > documents in GNOME 3. The default here is to just say that > GNOME Shell replaces "Recent Documents" in the panel, and the > rest stays the same. But all the interest in Tracker, Zeitgeist, > etc, shows that people aren't that satisfied with the current > ways this work. > > Whether significant progress is made here for GNOME 3, or we > stick with the default situation, is really about whether > people want to continue experimenting as currently, or whether > a push is made to unify the experiments, figure out the big > story, and get something into place in the short term. Putting > experiments into the default GNOME 3 desktop would be a mistake, > though hopefully we can provide (via the gnome-shell extension > system, etc) a good platform for further experiments. > > Anyways, largely outside the narrow scope of the shell. > > Accessibility: > > Two big areas of work here: one is keynav, the second is exposing > the user interface tree to AT's. Keynav is partially there, but > there's a ton of work to make sure that *everything* is keynavigable. > > Exposing the UI tree will likely fall out of the work that is being > done with Cally, though the exact relationship of that with Clutter > (is it a separate library) is not, to my knowledge, completely > finalized. But exposing a raw tree of clutter actors is in no way > interesting, so there's probably considerably *more* work to make > sure that the tree exposed from gnome-shell meaningful represents > the objects and actions on them, and likely some AT-side to work to > figure out how to interact with objects in gnome-shell that had no > correspondence in the GNOME 2 desktop, like the Overview itself. > > (Editorial: unfortunately, accessibility in GNOME has too often been > partial technical solutions and unfulfilled promise. While not > regressing on the technical side is important, I don't think that's > the interesting thing - the interesting thing is to make progress > on the user experience here. So we shouldn't be grading ourself > on whether we continue exposing a UI tree to AT's, but whether we > have AT's that can take that information and present a coherent > user experience based on it.) > > Internationalization: > > Clutter and gnome-shell build on top of Pango, so there isn't really > any problem on the output side of things, and we're using gettext > for localization, but input is a bit of a problem. We now have our > text entry widget hooked up to GtkIMContext, but preedit isn't > there, and auxiliary windows won't be shown if you are typing > in the activities overview (since no windows show there.) > > And of course: > > User testing: > > We have not (in general) set down users in front of GNOME Shell and > watch how they succeed and fail with it and how they like it. > > I think we're at a point now where this begins to make some sense, > and I'd hope to have some initial results by the end of the year. > > Time considerations > =================== > > There's not, in my estimation, to finish the current work, user test, > change it, polish performance and quality, and then ship that by March. > > What part of that equation got cut out would be flexible, but the end > effect would be that a GNOME 3 in March with GNOME Shell would be beta > quality - we'd have to either lock it down and freeze it without > finishing everything, or we'd be changing stuff up to the last minute. > > If we were really desperate for a GNOME 3 at this point, we could > do that, but I don't get the sense that is the case; generally the lack > of a GNOME 3 isn't blocking people from building desktops with > incremental improvements. It makes more sense to take our time and > do a really good job. > > > _______________________________________________ > gnome-shell-list mailing list > gnome-shell-list gnome org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list Bing brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it now. |