Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

[mawarkus t-online de (Matthias Warkus)]

+++ Thu, Aug 05, 1999 at 02:54:06AM +0200 +++
Ronald de Man e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> 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).

To me, the only piece of Gnome Workshop that looks like it's making
any progress is Gnumeric. The entire Gnome Workshop project looks a
bit defunct.

[gnome-ppp]
 
> So the novice user reboots to windows.

(I don't care about that kind of rhetorics, BTW.) What do you want? Do
you want gnome-ppp to be setuid? It would have got to be audited for
that, and of course there are already enough setuid programs on an
average Linux system, the less, the better.

> > > 	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).

This is not a Gnome issue. 

> 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.).

Yes, but that would need periodical rescans, which can generate high
I/O traffic. That in turn can mean high network traffic, depending on
the system setup.

> > > 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.

So, let me recapitulate this: You want to have a copy of the system
menu tree in every user's home directory. You simply say "shouldn't
really be needed" to talk the disadvantage (that the trees could come
out of sync w/r/t each other) out of the way. And all that just in
order to have the user menu entries and system menu entries
intertwined in one menu hierarchy instead of keeping them separated?

mawa
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