Re: Planning for GNOME 3.0

[Sebastian Pölsterl <sebp k-d-w org>]

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Emmanuele Bassi schrieb:
> On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 14:34 +0200, Sebastian Pölsterl wrote:
> 
>> I think it would be a big mistake to omit applets in the new gnome desktop
>> evolution.
> 
> why?
> 
> we've been changing the platform gradually over the years, mostly by
> deprecating stuff and including new functionality. nevertheless, I
> haven't heard a single justification for the continued existence of
> "applets".
> 
> what do applets provide, nowadays, and are they even remotely useful?
> what can deskbar-applet provide that cannot be implemented with
> something that does not sit inside a 24x24 icon on the most valued piece
> of screen real estate? isn't a gnome-do approach equivalent to the
> deskbar-applet? why tomboy-applet is so special? it's basically a
> launcher with a custom context menu. also, starting up deskbar-applet
> *and* tomboy as applets on my panel causes my desktop more to start up
> on login; not great turn ons, especially when there are developers out
> there trying to get the boot-to-UI process down in the seconds range.
> 
I agree that the current applet paradigm is outdated and it doesn't do
well when you have a lot of applets or an applet that takes some time to
load. But those are the problems we want to solve, right? I'm not saying
that we should keep the whole applets system, but I want something
similar to it. I don't care if it's called applet or widget or whatever,
if it's in the panel or somewhere else. For me the idea of applets is
that you can access information/functionality with minimum effort. Let's
say deskbar-applet would be an application started from the menu. That
would make deskbar-applet useless, because it should help you starting
applications and doing tasks with less effort. Now if I have to start
deskbar-applet first, I can just open the application I want to in the
first place.

> [...]
> 
> yes, it was all good with GNOME 1.x, but even for 2.x the amount of
> applets has been steadily decreasing - also because writing an applet is
> not trivial (as it involves dealing with some of the most obscure and
> less documented parts of our development platform). people have been
> abusing the system notification area with all sorts of crap (beagle,
> tomboy, etc.) because writing an applet is *boring* (server files
> anyone?) and *hard* (weird build changes, hard to debug uses, completely
> different APIs for handling the menus), and it really doesn't provide
> you with much functionality (wow, an icon and a context menu!).
> 
> so, please: saying "it would be a mistake" without providing reasons why
> it would be good to have applets support in the first place it's not
> going to convince me that we should keep them.
> 
You're right that writing an applet with the current framework is
extremely painful and difficult to understand, but again that's what we
want to change, right? If we can make creating an applet easier maybe
people decide to write applets again.

If one can easily write an applet one can easily adjust his desktop
without being an expert in programming. Because applets tend to be those
little programs that make your live a little bit easier they *do* make a
difference.

- --
Greetings,
Sebastian Pölsterl




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