Re: To answer your question about the upcoming Style-Guide...

[sun <as387 yfn ysu edu>]

Dan Kaminsky wrote:

> >important reason is that gnome panel is not just a launcher .. it can also
> >host applets ... and most applets require more space ...
> 
> Ah.  Gnome panel's gotta become a wee bit more forgiving...
> 
> >plus if they were any smaller they would be hard to hit with the mouse ...
> 
> Uh?  You kidding?  If they were any bigger they'd be hard to miss.  :-)
> Seriously, small icons in Win32 are 16x16 pixels and they're completely
> clickable.  It's not hard to select lines of text, and they're about this
> size if not smaller.  Almost everything you've said is valid, but not this
>:-)

i, for one, stand with george in that i think the icon size is perfect
for my desktop.

i'll concede again, however, in that this should be a little more
flexible: i'm looking forward to running gnome on my palm-pilot, and i
think the panel should be no wider than about sixteen pixels on that...
just wide enough to contain recognizable icons. :)

(to the ever-present level-headed non-dreamers who would propose that
i'm getting a little carried away with this thing, let me ask, "why
not?")

> >that's why there are all those ways to hide the panels out of the way
> 
> Hurm.  I think the need to hide something shows a flaw in design...

i can't possibly overstate my disagreement with this sentence. you
yourself have been arguing against "clutter;" i should hardly have to
point out that auto-hiding (or even explicitly hiding) the panel is the
_best_ compromise between your clutter-free desktop and my
multiple-entry-points-plus-status-applet do-all desktop headquarters.

in fact, george, can i put in a feature request for a panel that
auto-hides even when drawers with applets are open? perhaps even a
choice in the individual drawers' preference window to keep drawers open
even when the panel is hidden (automatically and explicitly)? :)

> >> You misunderstand.  GNOME is quite powerful, and lets say suddenly you go
> >> ahead and do something that leaves you with no ability to do anything
> unless
> >> you understand the CLI and .rc files.  You need something like, say
> >> Control-Alt-F12 to return to default.  Something like that(I don't really
> >> like some random key config, cuz it's documentation-dependant).
> >
> >this is what session managment does ... no need for a keybinding ... just
> >start up a default session from gdm (or whatever the name will be)

> Whatever it is needs to be simple enough for the newbie to save him or
> herself without using the CLI.

umm, how about a gui file manager and a gui text editor? since one
_must_ use those tools to mess up the panel as badly as you suggest, i
propose they're good enough to fix it.

not that i'd complain if a
meta-ctrl-shift-triple-middle-click-while-standing-on-your-head shortcut
were to appear in gnome, as most of us would never notice it (or indeed
have reason to use it) anyway. :)

> Haven't both Redhat and Debian committed to making Gnome the standard UI?

i think so, although i still fail to see how this guarantees the
evolution of a "default" gnome windowmanager. at the debian 2.0 party on
irc, i was informed that debian has a menu system that lets you pick
your window manager, rather than giving an arbitrary default. (i don't
use debian, but i rather like this solution and can reasonably see
redhat doing something similar with a gtk+ menu during xfree install, in
the future.)
--
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safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin