Re: gDesklets in GNOME 2.5?

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Hi,

I think gdesklets should be the same as applets, but added to the
desktop instead of the panel. Otherwise we further complicate the user
model (and implementation model). Should just have "embeddable objects"
that can be either place.

Also, though I know Alex and Dave will hate me, it's simply right for
nautilus rather than the window manager to manage these things.
Everything on your desktop needs to be laid out in one spot.

If gdesklets are kind of quick-hack eye candy rather than a cleanup of
the overall applet user model, I think they're a cool thing to have
exist but I'm not convinced they should be in the GNOME base release.

There are interactions with nautilus, window manager, libwnck that would
have to be coded/bugfixed; there are user model implications; there are
a11y implications; it's a fair bit of work to add them to the base. So
if we're going to do that work we should do it properly and have generic
embeddable desktop extensions, rather than separate desklets and
applets.

Another important reason to do this is that the applets require quite a
bit of maintenance. The backends for battery monitors, load meters, etc.
tend to break across kernel versions, require porting to new OS's, and
so forth. So we really don't want both gnome-applets and gnome-desklets
packages to maintain.

Keep in mind also that it's basically an a11y/i18n requirement that we
don't have hardcoded "pixmap GUI"; the default setup of each extension
needs to be native widgets using the standard colors and font sizes,
though skins are OK they have to be optional. (The exception may be a
desklet whose only purpose is to look cool, i.e. no functionality at
all, since making that available to someone who's blind just doesn't
make any sense.)

Anyway, I see no harm in adding gdesklets to fifth toe or whatever until
they're ready; seems like we get the flash/PR value without having to
include them in the base.

Havoc