Re: [Usability]Gnome - Control Center And More

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Hello lan15!

lör 2003-02-22 klockan 12.31 skrev lan15@walla.co.il:
> I think gnome is great but'
> The Control Center is awful
> i cant do anything in the Control Center
>  if i want to enable hebrew in Gnome This is a difficult task
>  need to chose the right fonts then add a terrible applet called GKB 
> then i need to add hebrew keymap 
> take for example windows this time
> all i need to do in windows is just to enter the control panal then double click on
> Regional and language options
> then chose from the list the hebrew langauge and thats it
> Whats more easy and simple?
> all the hebrew users complain about this subject so somebody even wrote a guide
> i hope u will had a new item to the control center called internationazion
> thanks 

I can understand your frustration, these are difficult and very
frustrating tasks to do as a user that just wants to get something to
work.

However, there are many aspects of language support in a desktop
environment and to get a reasonable amount of localized experience for
the user: translation of the software itself, keyboard layout support,
and appropriate fonts as you point out. Typically, these are handled by
totally different pieces of software: Keyboard layouts are handled by
the X server (usually XFree86), software translation is handled by the
desktop environment (GNOME in this case) and what fonts is installed on
the system by default is handled by the distribution vendor.

The responsibility for tying all this together and making all of this as
smooth and easy as possible usually is at the distribution level. Your
distribution vendor can choose what keyboard layouts should be supported
in their distribution, either by making sure the layouts needed get
included in XFree86 or by making temporary local changes. They also have
full control over the language/locale selection process during
installation, and they can also choose what desktop environments and
software to include and make necessary changes and additions and/or
preconfigurations to the post-install language selection in those if
necessary.
And, as already pointed out, the distribution vendor has full control
over what fonts are included with the distribution. And they can make
the GKB applet or something similar launch by default.

I hence suggest that you try to contact your favorite distribution
vendor if you want to have the process of having a fully localized
Hebrew desktop made much easier. They have the control needed to do
that.


> another thing is :
> 
> 1) Xchat - The main gnome irc software
> needs a new look,the colors there are awful.

XChat, although it uses GNOME libraries, is not an application developed
by the GNOME project. The XChat website is at http://www.xchat.org/. You
can find appropriate contact information regarding XChat there.


> 2)Better BiDi Support In Editing
> one problem with the BiDi Support in Gtk is that there isnt an
> Combination keys that change the direction (In Win - Crtl And Shift)

I'm not sure there is a bug report about that, but there probably should
be if there isn't already. You can submit a bug report at
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/.


Thanks,
Christian