Re: Lock'n'load! [Was: Integrating system tools in GNOME]

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 11:31, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 03:34:00AM +0100, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> > 
> > I think that gnome-control-center with --use-shell option shipped by
> > Ximian is a better way to integrate GSTools with the desktop instead of
> > simply put it in the Apps Menu. That could leave us more freedom to
> > organize the tools well.
> 
> 1) An improved variant of the ximian shell is in cvs, but requires
>    you to apply a patch to enable it.
> 	gnome-control-center/control-center/ximian-shell.patch
> 
>    If there is some consensus that we should use it we can enable
>    it by default.
> 
> 2) The ximian shell is not a panacea.  It's layout engine is
>    reasonably smart but it is not going to be useful if the number
>    of capplets expands much beyond the current set.  We will need at
>    least two distinct collections
>     - user preferences
>     - system config

Another question is exactly what constitutes as system and what is a
user preference.  For example, a proxy setting I consider a system
preference, since the proxy generally is required for a whole network. 
So where does the proxy setting fit?

Also, what is the real definition of these?  Does system actually mean
"affects the entire machine", does it mean "needs root access to
modify", does it mean "low level non-user type detail", etc?

Guidelines should be available for config tool writers that specify the
general design guidelines for all this stuff.  I.e., how to tell if your
tool is a system tool or a preference tool.  How to decide when to break
a module up and whatnot, too.  i.e., should proxy be part of network
config or on its own?  should uber-capplets that handle 100 different
mostly related things be allowed?  if you can configure wireless access
points, firewalls, network connections, and proxy/dns settings in one
capplet, then why shouldn't there be a single capplet that configure all
server subsystems like Apache, Bind, DHCPD, and so on?)

>   and most likely a consistent way of handling unexpected capplets.
>   The key issue here is that once the ximian shell starts scrolling
>   it is alot less usable.  There are also layout issues for
>   languages like German with reallydamnlongwords.

Don't we have a widget somewhere that can do more intelligent icon
layouts?  Something that resizes nicely when labels are very wide?  And
maybe also configure the shell to adjust its default window size based
on the items within?  (To a sane maximum, of course.)

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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.