Re: Solution for OEMs/Gnome

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Daniel:

I think you are very right that being able to add icons to the panel
is something that many OEM's would like to do.  I think nobody has yet
asked for this feature loud enough.

The main problem here is with exposing the GConf configuration
interfaces that control the appearance of the panel.  In the past, these
have changed in incompatible ways, which is why the instructions in the
2.6 guide no longer work with newer versions of GNOME, for example.

What would be useful would be if someone wrote a script that modified
the GConf settings appropriately to add an icon to the panel.  Then
if the panel configuration usage of GConf changes, the script can be
modified to continue working.  This avoids exposing the GConf keys
directly, which is probably a good idea.

Since it sounds like people are mucking around with editing their
.gconf files by hand, why not write a script to do this work and
attach it to bug 166623.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=166623

Then we could probably ship it and there you go.

Brian


> > You were told at the beginning of this thread that such oem
> > customizations were unfortunately something that still needed work...
>
> Well... I've been told many times on this thread that it's easy. I have 
> no problem with it needing work. I don't expect Gnome to be perfect. But 
> if people keep saying it's easy without actually giving me reasonable 
> way to do it I'll speak up.
>
> > And please don't answer me "I want to create an icon, not to learn about
> > gconf!!!!!!!!!!!!"
>
> I've never said that. Indeed, I've said that I'm willing to put in a 
> reasonable amount of work. I've read the Gconf help, I've read parts of 
> the XML files. I really have spent a lot of hours on this. But the 
> feedback I've received has been roughly equivalent to saying that I must 
> figure out how to edit the gconf xml files without help. Personally, I 
> think that is more than a reasonable amount of effort because there are 
> so many files and they are complex.
>
> I don't expect to have a one-click solution. But I hope you'll 
> understand how it seems from my point of view. I'm simultaneously told 
> that (1) it's easy and that (2) I have to figure out how to edit a 
> complex XML file myself.
>
> Best,
> Daniel.