Re: Jump Lists / Quick Lists / Dash Embellishments in GNOME 3

[Sandy Armstrong <sanfordarmstrong gmail com>]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 2:12 PM, John Stowers
<john stowers lists gmail com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I see that Ubuntu has merged [1] their implementation of 'quick lists'
> [2], and also offer ways to embellish their application launcher icons
> with numbers and progress bars.
>
> Is there a plan describing how these things might fit with gnome-shell
> (or not)? [5] leaves this part unspecified.
>
> As I understood it, quick lists were meant to be supported upstream via
> exported GApplication actions [4], gtk offers GtkNumerableIcon [5] (but
> nothing in the dash), and there is no progress bar equivalent. Is this a
> correct summary, and is there a recommendation to application authors
> how similar things might be done in GNOME3?

We discussed several options at Boston Summit 2010, but I'm not sure
any solid conclusions were reached.

Having jumplists in the shell overlay was desired by pretty much
everybody, though it was not specified whether they would be
implemented as right-click menus on application icons, or something
else.

My takeaway from the session was that we would use a combination of
static verbs (specified in .desktop) and dynamic actions (specified
using GApplication actions) to build the "action list" in an
application's jumplist *and* in the application menu in the top panel
of the shell.  But after talking to Ryan Lortie later, it seemed that
he and Owen preferred using GApplication actions only for the
application menu, and that all actions in the jumplist would be
specified using the .desktop file.

The reason for specifying actions in the .desktop file was so that you
could execute actions without requiring the application to be running.
 For example, clicking "New Note" in Tomboy or "Play" in Banshee (why
should you have to launch the app first for those options to appear?).

Everybody agreed that documents needed to be in the jumplist as well,
with the ability to "star" documents (like "pinning" notes in Tomboy's
note menu), but there was much disagreement about what document API to
use.  Emmanuele Bassi was happy to accept additions to GtkRecent* API,
but many people felt that a real document tracker would be necessary
to pull off a really nice UX, and at that point there was disagreement
about whether the shell should have a built-in document tracker, or if
Zeitgeist should be used.  It's possible that Owen, Jon, and Federico
have more to say about this, as I believe they chatted a bit more
after the session.

I apologize for never blogging my summary of this session, and as I
haven't been very involved in shell development lately I do not know
if this represents the very latest information.

Sandy