Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

[Ronald de Man <deman win tue nl>]

On Tue, Aug 03, 1999 at 12:30:42AM +0200, Matthias Warkus wrote:
> +++ Mon, Aug 02, 1999 at 02:54:53PM -0400 +++
> jack wallen, jr e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> > as a *user* of gnome here's what i think is necessary for Gnome (remember
> > this is an opinion ;-) ):
> > 
> > Applications/Applets:
> > 
> > 	Office Suite 
> 
> Someone needs to code it. An office suite is a major effort. Millions
> of lines of code, that is.

There's a Gnome Workshop project (with no less than 3 word processor
attempts, which I think is a bit unfortunate).

> 
> > 	Easier to use dial up control
> 
> Just *how* much easier do you want it to get? You've got gnome-ppp and
> the Modem Lights applet, what's the problem?

It can and should be easier to set up. I haven't looked at gnome-ppp
for a while, but last time I checked it was not possible to do the
whole setup from within gnome-ppp. Nowadays with most ISPs you only
need three bits of information: phone number, login name, password.
All other data is pretty standard. Gnome-ppp should at least be able
to ask for these three, and set things up accordingly. (Okay, I guess
it should also be told where to find the modem device.)
However, the user guide says:

---
Although gnome-ppp attempts to make configuring a PPP connection as easy as possible, there are still
several files that need to be edited as superuser (root) for gnome-ppp to work properly. gnome-ppp itself is
not a set-user-id program, nor does it have any helper programs that pose any security risk. gnome-ppp
uses the permissions of the /usr/sbin/pppd program, which the user of gnome-ppp must have permission to
execute. 
---

So the novice user reboots to windows.

> 
> > 	More simplistic mount/unmout of removable media
> 
> Same question: how much easier do you want it? You can use desktop
> icons or the mount applet.

I think some autodetection is possible. And it should be allowed
to take floppies out whenever there is no disk activity (I think
that's possible when you set nosync in /etc/fstab, but I haven't
tried it yet).

It would also be nice if gmc windows (including the desktop) would
automatically detect directory changes (so that icons appear whenever
a new file is created, etc.).

> 
> > UI:
> > 
> > 	Ability for normal user to edit menu entries
> 
> Impossible. The best thing we could do were to copy the entire
> system menu over to the home directory and have it edited there. But
> then upgrades to the system menu's wouldn't reach you any more.

Of course this is possible. Just copy the directory tree of the system
menu, and add entries to the local copy. These entries would override
the entries of the system menu. Upgrades will still show up (except
for updates of overridden entries). An upgrade that changes the menu
tree a lot would make a mess, but such upgrades shouldn't really be
needed.

Ronald