Re: gnome-panel & gnome-applets?

[William Jon McCann <william jon mccann gmail com>]

Hi Vincent,

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org> wrote:
> Le mardi 28 décembre 2010, à 15:20 +0100, Olav Vitters a écrit :
>> However, the fallback is meant as a fallback, not as providing
>> gnome-panel and its applets. So I don't see anything wrong with not
>> providing the applets. While at the same time, I don't see anything
>> wrong with releasing a new gnome-applets tarball.
>>
>> Meaning: GNOME 3 is not gnome-panel and never will be. But if someone
>> still hacks on gnome-applets nobody will work against them.
>
> FWIW, I personally don't like calling this "fallback" and that's why I
> named it "Classic GNOME" in gnome-session.

Ah, so that may be the source of this particular confusion.  I think
we should fix that.

> Sure, it's not our priority nor target, in terms of development (and it
> shouldn't be). But to a lot of people, "fallback" means "you'll get some
> ugly stuff that barely works", and while I do think we want to push
> people to use GNOME Shell, there's no reason to make users who can't
> use it feel second-class GNOME users.

It is second class I don't think there is any point in whitewashing
it.  Whether or not you get something that barely works has everything
to do with how much attention it gets in design, development, and
testing.  If you want to use something for a fallback that won't
really get any of those three it had better be simple as hell.  And
ban any complexity that does not provide essential functionality.

It is also important to indicate to the user that the fallback is not
normal.  Due to some kind of failure they are receiving a sub-optimal
experience.  That is incompatible with the design goals of something
that would have equivalence to the default.

Again, our message should be simple: if you don't have hardware that
will work - don't upgrade.  Ideally, OS installers should be able to
provide a crystal clear indication to the user (probably by actually
trying to run a similar shell).  Or rather, ideally we'd design or
certify hardware.

> Using gnome-panel+metacity as a fallback is not incompatible with having
> gnome-panel+metacity offer a usable desktop. There are people who care
> about this mode, and it's up to those people to step up to make sure it
> will be usable.

I don't think that is right.  I don't think we can simultaneously
design the fallback experience to be consistent with and minimize the
differences from the default and keep it an entirely distinct and
"classic/traditional" mode.

If someone wants to fork off and continue to maintain a GNOME 2-like
experience they are certainly free to do that but I am strongly
against calling it GNOME.  As we can see in this thread we already
have enough confusion about what GNOME 3 is and will be.  Adding to it
seems like a really bad idea to me.

That simple JS based fallback panel/menubar idea is sounding better
and better... anyone want to give it a shot?

Jon