Re: Thoughts on 2.10

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 17:08 -0700, George Farris wrote:
> I've been following the news groups and talking to a number of users
> over the last couple of days. By no means does this qualify as a good
> poll but there are a couple of things that come up over and over again. 
> Most of these people are from University settings, professors, staff and
> students.
> 
> What people want improved in GNOME, these are in no particular order:
> 
> 1) Consistent drag and drop policy.

What exactly is broken?  Need to be more specific.

> 2) Speed, GNOME performance requires improvement, app start up etc.
> 3) Ways to mount network (mostly Samba) via Nautilus so it appears next
> time user logs in.  (Mapping a drive in MS comes to mind)

Nautilus has done this for at least one previous release, if not two.
Just use the "Connect to Server" feature and the server is remembered
between sessions.

> 4) Solid selection of Media applications.
> 5) A good gtk CD/DVD burner application.
> 6) Working point and click plugin installation for browsers.

This has a bazillion problems that GNOME can't really work around.
Like, say, the fact that most of the plugin vendors are asshats and wrap
their plugins in these installers that require shell script-foo to
unpack, and have non-redistribution/modification clauses.

Mozilla/Firefox already has an awesome plugin installation framework.
You just need to get the plugin vendors to remove their heads from their
rears and support it.

> 7) Consistent print dialog in all apps, browsers/office apps etc.

Not to mention make the print dialog actually useful.  The current thing
is horridly complex and bloated, and doesn't even have some _very_
common and useful features.  Like "print only odd(even) pages" for all
us people who can't afford duplex printers.

> If those could be solved for the next release and then start in on new
> features again it would make a lot of people happy.

Feel free to contribute patches.  The way things work now, people work
on what they feel like working on.  If none of the core developers are
in the mood to work on printing, it won't happen.  If you have an itch
to scratch, please, please do so.

> 
> Cheers
> 
>