Re: control center plans, etc.

[Stephen Browne <Stephen Browne Sun COM>]

Hi,

I started looking at the new-control-center a couple of days ago and 
I was talking to Bradford Hovinen on IRC yesterday.

I have a couple of concerns about the current plan.
Please see my comments embedded below.

> We have been working on the new control center for some time, but has
> not gotten to releasable quality yet.
> 
> So far, we have :
> - Created a new shell

At first look I kind of liked the idea of the HTML view for launching the 
capplets, but thinking about it some more I'm not sure that we actually
need any kind of shell at all.  Since all the capplets are all just little
dialog applications they can be launched from anywhere.  Menu, Nautilus,
gnome run, whatever.
The HTML view is pretty but nautilus could accomplish the same thing.
The icon view is nearly identical to an icon view in nautilus.  
Maybe use the virtual folder suggested by Havoc.
I don't think many people like the tree view :)

> - Make the capplets pop up a dialog rather than embeding them

This already works right? and they could be launched from anywhere.
The only need for a dedicated shell would be for embedding the capplets right?

> - Implemented location management, some capplets are using the location
> manager already and it is very nice. 

I agree this is nice functionality, my concern is that the archiver used to 
accomplish this is currently part of the Ximian-Setup-Tools and I don't know
about other distributors but I am fairly certain that SUN has no intention of
delivering or supporting XST.

Making the Control Center depend on XST is not a really nice idea.
I know the archiver stuff is conditionally compiled at the minute so that
this dependancy doesn't truely exist, but people without XST are going to
loose out on the location management feature.

> - Metathemes, very nice too. This removes a lot of the old and most
> confusing capplets.

I didn't see this, is it in control-center or XST?

> (I liked the idea you once talked about regarding having a
> control-center-plus module with all the advanced capplets like the
> sawfish configurator for example) 
> - XST, the setup tools will be launchable from the control-center

Why can't they be lauched like any other application?  They can right?
So why do they need a dedicated shell?


> - Redid some capplets, they are better than the old ones but i still do
> not like them.

Heh :)  I'd like to help out with this if you want help.
Is there a ToDo list for work to be done on these capplets?
We (SUN) also have some HCI engineers that you can take advantage of to get
opinions.  Calum has already posted his comment about the useabilty study
and I think he and the rest of the HCI team could be a useful resource.

> 
> But there is a lot of stuff we need to do, so it would be great if we
> can coordinate this effort. Stuff that we need to do :
> - Stabilize the new shell and beautify it.

You now know how I feel about this :)

> - Reorganize the capplets

I agree on a more task orientated  approach for this.

> - Fix the GUI of the current capplets, right now the capplets are
> somewhat complex.
> - Implement the root manager 
> 
> On 19 Jun 2001 19:16:03 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> >  
> > 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
> 
> This has already been done in the stable branch.
> 
> >  - add the "user prefs" virtual folder to Nautilus, icons in 
> >    here launch a single standalone control panel
> 
> good idea.



Replacement for the gnomecc shell???


> 
> >  - add the "system settings" virtual folder to Nautilus 
> >    (contains Red Hat config tools in the Red Hat release)
> 
> or the Ximian Setup Tools in Ximian GNOME (and any other distro that
> wants to use them)

See XST doesn't need gnomecc.


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> 
> [1] Right now it is in the ximian-setup-tools module as the archiver is,
> we can move this to an different, more apropiate module.

That would be nice I think.

Cheers, 

Stephen.