Re: Fw: [PROPOSAL] Better control center

[Brandon Fosdick <bfoz glue umd edu>]

Kenneth Christíqua wrote:
> 
> Forgot to send it to gnome-list, ups ;)
> 
> > James Green wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sun, 25 Apr 1999, [iso-8859-1] Kenneth Christíqua wrote:
> > >
> > > > Here's a proposal, I would like you all to look at
> > > >
> > > > http://home1.inet.tele.dk/wandy_ch/ccproposal.html
> > >
> > > Hmm. I totally agree that the Window Manager needs to be configured
> > > through the Gnome Control Center; I'm just not sure how best it should be
> > > implmented.
> > >
> > > Each Window Manager has different things to configure, so a single capplet
> > > isn't the answer. OTOH, for consistency all the WM capplets should look
> > > and operate the same way (you shouldn't have two ways of selecting a
> > > background image, one for both of your installed WMs).
> > >
> > > The question therefore is, does one capplet detect and modify itself to
> > > the current WM, or should capplets be produced for each WM.
> > >
> > > James Green
> >
> > Windoze solves this problem by using standardized dialogs (properties) that
> > various programs can add sections (tabs) to. So maybe make a default capplet
> > with all the common elements (background, etc...) and allow wm's to install
> > extensions to it.
> 
> What about making something in between, a capplet that will access information
> from an outside plugin.
> 
> So if you're running enlightenment it will access a enlightenment-conf.plugin
> file, and when you are running icewm, it will access icewm-conf.plugin
> 
> Maybe this is too complicated?

That's exactly what I meant to say. :)
Maybe call them "sub-capplets"?

> 
> >
> > It would be difficult to try and get a multitude of capplets to look the same
> > (or even similar). This way the common pieces look the same and the "custom"
> > elements are the only variations.
> >
> > I know this is similar to having a capplet that modifies itself, but there is a
> > difference. Instead of the capplet trying to reorganize itself around what it
> > can find (and might have to look for) it just incorporates whatever is given to
> > it by the installed wm's. Of course this requires some common method of getting
> > wm's to talk to control-center, but I think we'll need that anyway.
> 
> This will mean that a lot of windowmanagers have to be modified, with an
> extended set of gnome hints. Probably the right thing, but that just makes it
> even harder to create an windowmanager. And I'm not sure that the
> windowmanager developers think that this is a god idea.
> 

Maybe not modified, but added to. A minimal plugin would just be an interface
between control-center and the wm's existing configuration utility.

Creating a wm wouldn't be that much harder if there was access to a set of
"canned" plugins. For instance, every wm needs some way to configure things like
window decorations and drag modes, but they may not do it the same way. A set of
simple standard plugins would provide a base for wm programmers to build off of.

-Brandon
-- 
bfoz@starfleet.umd.edu
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