Re: Modulesets Reorganization

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 02:41 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
> Le mardi 01 juin 2010, à 19:11 -0500, Shaun McCance a écrit :
> > 3) How strongly will we recommend various applications
> > to our distributors?
> 
> My first reaction to your question is that distributors already choose
> whatever they want. It's true that our recommendation can make a
> difference in their decision, though. The way we'll recommend apps is by
> promoting them, and we'll promote the ones that are good. So they'll
> likely be picked by distributors because they're good. (I might be naive
> there, but I'm also a distributor -- sure, I can be a naive distributor
> ;-))
> 
> That being said, can you give an example of where this would be an issue
> today? The classic one is banshee vs rhythmbox. Or now shotwell vs
> f-spot vs gthumb. And we don't recommend anything there.
> 
> > Please understand that this has a HUGE impact on how we
> > design and write the GNOME 3 help. We want to be able to
> > point to e.g. gucharmap in a topic on entering special
> > characters. Mallard gives us the flexibility to do this
> > even with disparate module sets, but the more ifs and
> > maybes we have to deal with, the harder it is to plan.
> 
> I think the example you give might actually give us an answer: if you
> want to be able to point to gucharmap in the help, then it's an
> indication that gucharmap might be a good candidate for Desktop.

There's a certain class of applications that users don't tend
to think of as applications. They're utilities, and you just
expect your "desktop" to provide them. And I think that's part
of what the release team is proposing.

But the line between application and utility is fuzzy, and we
want to present help to users where they expect it. So if a
user goes to the desktop help looking for "back up my files",
we want to have an answer.

So we have a few options with Mallard:

1) The help for the program is maintained in the desktop help.
This is only an option for things that are so core to GNOME
that you'd never see a GNOME desktop without them.

2) The help is maintained with the program, but it installs
into the desktop help. This is an option for things that you
might see distros removing, but which most users just see as
"part of the desktop".

3) The program has a separate help document. It might also
put some splash pages in the desktop help. So, for example,
Déjà Dup could have its own help, but insert a topic called
"Back up my files with Déjà Dup" into the desktop help that
then links to the full Déjà Dup help. (This has the potential
of getting out of hand.)

So we have options. And the application/utility cutoff for
our release sets probably won't map perfectly to the cutoff
for our help. And that's OK. Mallard can take it.

The question is just how we organize and where we encourage
people to plug stuff in. Think of Mallard as a generic plugin
system. It handles the technical details, but developers still
have to decide on the specific extension points.

-- 
Shaun McCance
http://syllogist.net/