Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

> From: Davyd Madeley <davyd madeley id au>
> To: Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>
> Cc: Desktop Development List <desktop-devel-list gnome org>,
>      Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>
> Subject: Re: control-center 2.13.90 released
>
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 08:58:22AM -0500, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 12:49 +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:52 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> > >
> > > > I also feel that it looks odd and out of place (Why else would I click
> > > > on a different image than to have it be my background?).  It appears
> > > > this was done because the change was too slow -- at least that's the
> > > > valid reason I could find at
> > > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
> > > > though in thinking we should make it fast instead.
> > >
> > > And in the meantime, a bit of pointer feedback would probably relieve
> > > any "why is nothing happening?" symptoms on the instant-apply front.
> >
> > The gnome-background-properties dialog has no idea how long it will
> > actually take for the settings to take effect, as it does not control
> > the actual drawing on the background. The gconf calls to set the keys
> > succeed and return instantly, which means that changing the pointer in
> > the capplet itself, based on that information, would be totally useless.
> > A timeout would still be needed, to slow the UI down.
>
> At this stage in the game, I think we should look at doing three
> things:
>  (1) reverting the UI change, it is a bandaid fix to a deeper
>      problem;

If the hope is to change it back when things get faster then this current
change is inflicting unnecessary software churn on users.

As I'm on older crappy hardware I guess I should sit out this release
cycle entirely as an even slower Gnome would probably kill it.

>  (2) shipping GNOME 2.14 with gtk-engines 2.6, leaving people who
>      giving us more time to optimise gtk-engines/cairo/X

I expect this would be unpopular with developers (especialy dobey).
How many developers have really crappy hardware?  (ie > 3 years old)

-- Alan H.