Re: Planning for GNOME 3.0

[Stefan Kost <ensonic hora-obscura de>]

Brian Cameron schrieb:
> 
> Emmanuele:
> 
>> 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".
> 
> I wonder how this fits in with the gdesklets project, if at all.  I
> know Calum Benson, UI engineer at Sun, has suggested that it would be
> nicer from a UI perspective if there were just one desklet/applet
> type interface.  Perhaps moving to a gdesklets model would be nicer?
> Or do we need to reinvent the wheel here?
> 
> Also, does the avant-window-manager fit into plans at all.  In terms
> of providing a nice interface for keeping track of running applications
> and providing desktop shortcuts, it seems a nice alternative to
> consider.
> 
> Perhaps I missed the discussion where such alternative designs are
> being considered, so please forgive if I'm asking a stupid question.
> 
> Brian

one major difference between desktop applets and panel applets is that windows
don't cover the panels. I brought a 24" screen for a good reason. On such a
setup I can easily spare 24 pixels here and there for the desktop. This way I
can easily see on gnome system monitor when my build is done and I don't need to
minimize windows to see how late it is.

Stefan

> 
> 
>> 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.
>>
>> any default GNOME installation on basically every modern distribution
>> comes with:
>>
>>    - menu applet
>>    - notification area
>>    - clock (+ weather)
>>    - audio volume applet
>>    - window list applet
>>
>> and not only I have yet to see any regular user change the contents of
>> the panel (because it's mostly undiscoverable and because most people
>> *just don't care*) but I also haven't heard any justification for
>> allowing this in the first place. gnome-shell moves away from the menu
>> and the window list applets; it embeds the notification area and the
>> clock; and the volume is now becoming a notification area icon since
>> basically everyone has media keys on their keyboard and don't need an
>> on-screen slider anymore.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> ciao,
>>   Emmanuele.
>>
> 
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