Re: GNOME 3 [was Re: GNOME following a non-free standard]

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com>]

On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 20:43 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
>  - Really boring maintenance 
> 
>  - Rewrite it for no reason or to make a major change in the
>    user interface
> 
> Neither of these is something that the new GNOME hacker will want
> to do. In the end, managing files and launching applications is
> chump-work. The real question is what is in those files? What
> do the applications do? What can GNOME do for the user? 

The remaining of the 2.x series should be about removing the little
annoyances/inconsistencies that are still present in the desktop - Alex
Graveley started with an excellent list of these, which Luis later moved
here:

http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap_2fFromThreePointZero

2.x should also be about making GNOME perform well.  We are memory hogs
right now.  Fixing this can turn out to be pretty exciting; you really
get to know the code when you profile it.

For ThreePointZero, it would be valuable to look at common tasks which
one does every day and which are not easily fixable with a few UI
tweaks.  Consider this scenario as it works right now:

You are chatting on IM with a friend.  He needs a file which you got as
a mail attachment from someone else.  However, simply forwarding the
mail to your friend is not appropriate, as you don't want him to get the
mail's other contents.  Right now, you have to:

1. Find the piece of mail.
2. Save the attachment.
3. Find the attachment.
4. Send it to your friend through the IM program.

Why can't I drag the attachment's icon from my mail program and drop it
in the IM window?

I wonder how much time people spend dealing with temporary files like
these, or dealing with similar administrative paraphernalia which the
computer should just be able to do by itself.

  Federico