Re: [gnome-flashback] GNOME Panel improvements

[Alberts Muktupāvels <alberts muktupavels gmail com>]

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 2:00 AM, Balló György <ballogyor gmail com> wrote:

Hi,

I created a patch-set for the GNOME Panel (see the attachments), which
improves the following things:

1. Don't set the presence if not changed. Currently it's possible to
unselect the radio button in the user menu. This patch fixes the
problem, and keeps the presence radio button on, if the user click on
it.

Are you sure it was not made so it can be unselected?

Anyway I would do it differently:

1) It should use radio items not check. Radio buttons are designed for this kind of task.

2) I would connect to toggled signal not activate. We are interested only if presence has changed so this signal looks better.

I attached my variant. What do you think?

 

2. Use custom menu layout. The official GNOME menu layout adds some
additional categories, which may confuse users. Reduce them in our
custom menu layout file.

It is not that simple as you think...

We patched ubuntu in similar way. Only custom menu file was added to gnome-menu package and gnome-panel.desktop file was edited to set XDG_MENU_PREFIX. This is only workaround and still does not solve problem fully. That is way I created this patch - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=732548.

At least one problem is that Alacarte (menu editing) program will use menu file XDG_MENU_PREFIX "applications.menu". That means users trying to edit menu will see different menu from what is available in gnome-panel.

To properly fix this bug we need above patch accepted in gnome-session or other way to set XDG_MENU_PREFIX for whole session.

I have not tried, but there might be a way to change XDG_MENU_PREFIX without above patch:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-session/tree/gnome-session/org.gnome.SessionManager.xml#n8

But then we need application that will be started in initialization phase and set up XDG_MENU_PREFIX to "gnome-flashback-". gnome-session set it to "gnome-". If this would work then I would probably do this:

1) Create new application gnome-flashback-init that will be run in initialization phase. At least for now its only task would be to set XDG_MENU_PREFIX.

2) I would add our custom menu in gnome-flashback module as it was made for this - place where to add all missing things for our session. It should be named gnome-flashback-applications.menu

3) Update gnome-panel to use XDG_MENU_PREFIX "applications.menu". This way file name would not be hardcoded.

I will try this after sending this mail.

 

3. Simplify Adwaita style. This brings a more traditional look and
feel for the panel with support for light and dark theme variants, and
also for the HighContrast theme. The style is as minimal as possible,
and reuses theme colors.

How to test dark theme variant?

Is this how it used to look by default? We don't need it as minimal as possible, but to look like nothing has changed. I am ubuntu user and I have only used Ambiance theme so I don't know it should look.

If we are going to leave borders on tasklist buttons than I would say that we need at least few pixels space around it.

4. Add show desktop applet to bottom panel. This makes the layout more
similar to GNOME 2.

Agree. Added to wip branch.

5. Show 'start-here' icon in menu bar by default. This restores the
old behavior in GNOME 2.

Where should I add -PanelMenuBar-icon-visible: false; to test it? Does it work? I know that setting icon sizes does not work anymore.

And was it default to show icon there in GNOME 2?

All patches are based on the wip/gnome-3.10+ branch. I hope you'll
like my changes.

I like, but I need some extra info before adding 3. and 5. patches.

--

Alberts Muktupāvels

Attachment: 0001-user-menu-don-t-allow-to-unselect-presence.patch
Description: Text Data