Re: Discussion: 2.2 Proposed Modules List

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Hi Jeff/All:

> 
> >   - acme: Daemon and configuration utility for 'special' keys on modern
> >     multimedia keyboards and notebooks.
> 
> acme rocks, I use it on my iBook and desktop machine. But, shouldn't these
> features be in metacity? Hard to say, given that acme includes weird
> hardware support, etc. Two keybindings configurators seems a bit redundant,
> and I'm not sure we should be adding modules that we intend to integrate
> later on.

Also, I believe that there is a need for a more general keybindings
configurator than acme - certainly we see a need for one for
accessibility reasons; and three keybindings configurators seems like a
bad idea.  I talked to the acme guys about this a little earlier, but we
didn't get too far.  Acme seems to be focussed on "multimedia keys"
which is very useful and desirable, but I think we will ultimately need
a more general-purpose solution.  I don't care if this is acme or
something else, but I think there is a potential issue here.

> Bastien, what are your plans/wishes for acme?

> >   - gcalctool: Scientific calculator. Proposed to replace gnome-calculator.
> 
> Do we need an advanced calculator in our desktop release? I'm not convinced
> that gcalctool is as cool as our current one, despite its preference for
> correct floating point answers. :-)

I think we should try and merge these somehow.

> >   - ggv: PDF and PostScript viewer.
> 
> Could do with some UI review love, but definitely worth getting back into
> the Desktop release.

But inaccessible, and no short-term hope of making it so.

...

> >   - vte: Terminal widget with improved font, internationalisation and
> >     accessibility support. Designed to replace libzvt.
> 
> We get better font, a11y and i18n support, and make a fairly hefty sacrifice
> in performance and fresh new bugs. If they're solvable in the 2.2 timeframe,
> it's worth it.

There is an accessibility stopper bug against vte; basically despite
hard work from Nalin, this widget is not yet accessible (unlike zvt). 
Marc Mulcahy, who did the zvt accessibility work, points out that the
vital part of the ATK API which vte is still missing was "the hardest to
get right".  Unless someone can tackle this head-on I would be very
concerned about swapping in vte for 2.2.  Marc is totally swamped with
gnome-speech at the moment, and he's the only real authority on terminal
widget accessibility that we have.
thanks,

-Bill
> - Jeff