Re: no external panels for gnome-control-center [was GNOME Feature Proposal: Backup]

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Thu, 2011-05-12 at 17:12 -0700, Dylan McCall wrote:
> I wasn't intending to jump into this because it has become vastly
> tangential and there's a pretty unhappy signal to noise ratio already.
> So, I realize I might be totally misunderstanding this. If I sound
> accusatory or anything, it's purely my writing getting carried away :)
> Here goes…
> 
> In any Gnome 2 desktop that has been loved, the System menu has many
> applications which do not exist upstream. An integrated control centre
> gives users a nice way to find those applications on the basis that
> they are accessed for similar reasons: configuring services and things
> that relate to the entire system (where each panel might affect more
> than one device, hence keywords).
> 
> Okay, that sounds good. Gnome 3's Control Centre _is_ really good.
> However, from the sounds of it, this isn't actually fixing our
> problem. This isn't replacing the system menu, or providing any kind
> of top level order. It configures Gnome, and only Gnome.

Nope. It configures the system. Printers, Date & Time settings, Network,
Bluetooth and I'm sure more things in the future. That's not configuring
GNOME that's configuring the system (in fact, the Bluetooth panel has
_zero_ user configuration. Everything is system configuration).

>  From here
> arises a pretty serious question: what does Gnome have to do with my
> screen resolution, and what am I to do if I am using NVidia's
> proprietary driver which comes with nvidia-settings? I no longer have
> the System menu, and apparently this won't be in Control Centre
> either. Either Gnome needs to keep up with everything nvidia-settings
> does, nvidia-settings needs to be an official Gnome module, or our
> users need to search for nvidia-settings as if it is any other
> application (eg: in the Applications section of the Activities
> overlay).

The nvidia settings will never integrate properly with GNOME, just like
they don't integrate with Windows. Fire up a Mac with NVidia cards in
it, do you see NVidia settings in the control panel? Nope.

If they want to integrate the settings the NVidia drivers provide, they
just need to use the same APIs as the other card makers. Then the
display panel will work as expected.

We don't want that to happen:
https://twitter.com/#!/hadessuk/status/68477119738548225

> On this same vein, it sounds like users will need to know what Gnome
> is and that Control Centre configures Gnome if they expect to find the
> particular configuration panel they are looking for.
> 
> Am I on the right track here?
> 
> --
> Dylan
> _______________________________________________
> desktop-devel-list mailing list
> desktop-devel-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list