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

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:00 PM, Luca Ferretti <lferrett gnome org> wrote:
> Il giorno gio, 12/05/2011 alle 19.12 -0400, Matthias Clasen ha scritto:
>

>
> BTW "pet project"... IMHO "pet" is something that plays down the merits,
> isn't it?

Yeah, a little. Sorry.

What I wanted to allude to with the term 'pet' is that third-party
panels tend to focus on the narrow needs of the project they belong
to, and expose a lot of special purpose options that seem important to
the developers who are deeply involved in that project.


Some examples of this that we've already seen are:
- color management (do you know what a perceptual rendering intent is ?)
- kerberos tickets (would you know whether to request a proxiable or a
forwardable ticket ?)

When looking at it from the whole-desktop perspective, many of those
options are typically better off in the special-purpose app than in
the panel, while the few relevant options might better be located in
another, already-existing panel. Figuring this out is hard, and
involves talking to designers; it will only happen if we put a hurdle
that forces people to do it.