Some suggestions for GNOME

[Prabhu Ramachandran <prabhu aero iitm ernet in>]

Dear Gnome developers,

	Firstly, I was not a member of this list and tried sending this
message to this list earlier (on July 17th) but got a reply saying that I
didnt subscribe to this list etc. etc.  I sent mail to the list master for
help but to no avail.  I later looked at the archives of this list to
check if my mail had been recieved by the list but it hadnt.  So now I am
resending this mail after subscribing to the list. I would appreciate if
something were done about this problem - not all GNOME users are
subscribed to this list and they too would like to communicate with other 
gnome users/developers. :)

	Below is the earlier message...

	I am a RH5.0 user and am using the 0.20 releases of gnome. Gnome
is really good and I love it and use it all the time. I have a few
suggestions to make to you. I am doing this with the sole purpose of
making gnome better not to discourage any of your efforts. I hope you
understand and take my criticisms in the right spirit :). They are as
follows

Panel: 

1. When one adds a menu to the panel one should be able to change the
icon for the menu by simply right clicking on it. I dont seem to be
able to do that... :(

Panel Applets: 

1. The panel applets take simply too much of RAM. For instance the
cpumemusage_applet takes up 3564KB RAM which is almost as much as
emacs on X! For what the applet does I cannot understand how it can
take so much RAM?? I believe that it may be a CORBA problem - since I
have heard that CORBA produces bloated code. It would be wonderful if
the applets took *much* less memory. ORBit ??

2. It would be nice if the one is able to click on an applet (or double
click on it (this could be user defined?)) and launch some program (which
preferably is user defined). What I have in mind is this - consider the
cpumemusage applet, when one (double) clicks on it it should launch gtop
(which BTW is superb!). It would be nice if the user had control over what
it would launch. It would be nice if one could also rotate the applet (try
to use the cpu usage applet with the panel vertical - then the panel
becomes "fat" to accomodate it :) ). Similarly with the other applets. The
printer applet too can launch a small printtool which allows one to look
at the print jobs and add or delete those jobs... The clock should be able
to launch the calendar. Again a user defined launch would be wonderful (if
not unbeatable!) !! One could also add drop configuring  i.e. the user
should be able to configure what action the applet or application does
when a file is dropped on it.


General Applications: 

1. Keyboard shortcuts are anxiously awaited. Even in gmc one needs
better keyboard support. It is generally faster to use the keyboard
short cuts when one can. It is not too efficient using the mouse for
everything and for the important common actions there could be some
common keys like ctrl+q or ctrl-x ctrl-c for exiting etc.  Again if
the user could chose between default key strokes or his own set of
keys it would be great (like an emacs key set etc.).  Actually the
cooledit application does a great job of key configuring. 

2. The Electric Eyes program is superb! It would be even better if you
could add a 'grab' routine as well so one can grab images using ee.


Thats all I can think of,

Thanks to all of you for gnome,

Regards,

prabhu

------------------- Prabhu Ramachandran -----------------------------
E-mail:  prabhu@aero.iitm.ernet.in
Finger (for more info):  prabhu@www.aero.iitm.ernet.in
Home page:  http://www.aero.iitm.ernet.in/~prabhu
---------------------------------------------------------------------