Re: control center plans, etc.

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 19Jun2001 07:16PM (-0400), Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I don't know of a dedicated list for this, so mailing gnome-hackers
> and control-center maintainers.
> 
> I'm considering implementing a simplified control panel scheme as
> discussed in this thread:
> 
>   http://lists.eazel.com/pipermail/nautilus-list/2001-May/003210.html
> 
> I'm looking at doing this against the stable branch, with a port to
> HEAD and merge upstream if people want.
> 

Hi Havoc,

John Harper implemented a version of this for the stable branch
already, along with the ability to browse control pannel applets
through Nautilus, and an instant-change UI with Undo. I think he
posted it on the list a couple of weeks ago.

I think the most productive work would be to productize the work he
did, and also to port it to the new bonobo-based control-center once
that is ready (he had to implement things in a really hacky way
because of the way the control-center works (capplets get forked and
then expect to find and add themselves into the unique instance of the
control-center shell object; this is rife with race conditions anyway
and really ought to be fixed).

Regards,

Maciej

> Basically there are just a few simple features:
> 
>  - hack the control center to be a shell around one capplet 
>    (separate window for each capplet), kill try/revert,
>    kill menubar/statusbar/tree-on-the-side
> 
>  - add the "user prefs" virtual folder to Nautilus, icons in 
>    here launch a single standalone control panel
> 
>  - add the "system settings" virtual folder to Nautilus 
>    (contains Red Hat config tools in the Red Hat release)
> 
>  - have panel submenus that are equivalent to those folders
> 
>  - for future control panels there's no need to use libcapplet, 
>    etc., since control panels are just little dialogs they 
>    can just be small apps with no embedding involved.
> 
> So, what are the current control center plans, how does this fit in,
> how much of this should go in CVS, on what branches should it go, etc.
> 
> I see there are some changes in control-center HEAD but don't know
> what the plans are there.
>