Re: First impression...

[Marcus Brubaker <spoon elpaso net>]

[snip]

Most of the problems you had were with the distro, not GNOME.  I'm sure
you realize this, but I figure I should just make sure.

> The Panel, everything seems to be working fine for me except for some reason
> at one time when I started gnome, a dialog poped up asking me if I wanted to
> open another Panel or not, I said yes because it seemed to be the safest thing
> to do, and I ended up with 2 of them, I then logged out and started it again,
> this time there was only 1 panel, but the clock-applet and pager-applet were
> gone and no Home/folder/icon on the desktop, when I started MC the home icon
> on the desktop reappeared and I just added applets and moved them around to
> the orginal position and that solved everything, but the puzzling side was I
> don't know why it happened in the first place, it may be that I had logged out
> of a previous session to fast.

Curious.  I noticed similar behaviour once myself but I was unable to
reproduce it.  If you manage to reproduce it submit a bug report on it.
(see http://bugs.gnome.org)

> some suggestions, store windows positioning information on exit, while MC does
> store whether you want detailed view of files or icon view, etcetera, it does
> not store the position it was last in, it would be more productive for me not
> to have to resize it everytime I start it. Since I'm a windows explorer user

I agree.  I wonder why this hasn't been implemented already, it's only
about 8 lines of code as I recall.

> this also helps me confirm what I wanted to do (copy or move). The last
> suggestions I'm not sure if that goes to the gtk+ or to MC, but it would be
> nice to be able to use the click on name to rename trick, in the detailed
> view, this does work in the iconic view. Next the icons don't all seem to be

This is a gmc thing.

> working in the detailed view, while in the icon view everything has icons,
> while in the detailed view somethings have icons others have *s and others
> don't have anything, the other thing to this it would be nice to have icons
> blended in with the file name better more like in windows explorer detailed
> view instead of having them in a seperate panes. The next one is the window

Submit a bug report, see above for URL.

> splitter, it would be nice if you could click on the entire strip (the section
> that splits a window in 2) to move the split left or right, as opposed to
> having to select a little square to move the split. The final, is so that if

This is a GTK+ thing.  I've been wondering why this wasn't done in the
first place myself.

> you click on the [+] or [-] icons/pictures in the folder hierarchy view, that
> it does not select the folder, so that the only way to select the folder in
> the file hierarchy view is to click on its folder icon or its name, and if it
> is already selected that it creates a rename box for the folder name. Please

As I recall, windows explorer doesn't do this either.  If you click on the
+/- it just expands/collapses but doesn't select.  I could be wrong
though.

> do not take offense to some of my comparisons to windows, at this point in
> time I feel more comfortable using its filemanager windows explorer, but I
> feel with a little work my productivity using Midnight Commander would be the
> same or even better.

Just realize that while the Windows way may be the one you're comfortable
with now, it may not be the best one.  If you keep that in mind, you
should be pretty safe.

> The gnome suggestions, I kind of like having a resize edge above the title
> bar, sometimes I find myself with only access to the top of a window and the
> fastest way to resize it vertically is to click on the top edge and resize it

This is a window manager thing.  What WM are you using?  If it is
enlightenment, try switching to a different WM theme.

> that way. The Gnome panel is the most advanced panel (called the task bar in
> win95/nt), I've ever used, it even does like windows98 (and nt with ie4
> update) with the sliding (the hiding slide the panel to the left or right),
> I'd suggest enhancing applications with this same sliding ability, so that
> menus and other tools open, like when opening a folder in MC and having the
> folder slide open as oposed to just poping open, this is not a productivity
> feature but it is an eye candy feature that looks cool (if your into that).

Better yet, add this and make it switchable.  I believe it's Word (or
something like that) that allows you to pick from four styles of menu
opening: Normal, Slide, Unfold and Random.

> I'm used to the windows standard hotkeys, like Ctrl->C to copy, Ctrl->X to
> cut, Ctrl->V to paste, Ctrl->Z undo, Ctrl->O to open a file, Ctrl->S to paste
> a file, I notice that gnotepad+ uses this (except for open) I'm happy about
> that, I'd like to see this in more programs though, netscape uses Alt instead
> of Ctrl :P, a lot of other programs use F3 to open instead, but productivity
> goes down if a convention is not choosen and used because it leads to
> confusion, or a changable convention is not used, for those who are used to it
> being one way and those who are used to it being another way. The other

Well, GNOME apps have a specified set of default keybindings for some
basic things in applications.  I think they are configurable in
control-center somewhere.  If an application is not developed as a GNOME
app it probably won't follow these keybindings and in fact may end up with
some *really* confusing key bindings. *coughemacscough*  ;)

[Snip stuff on registry]

GNOME has the beginnings of *something* similar to this, unless I'm
mistake, called metadata.  A few months ago there was also talk of setting
up a GOAD server for a registry kind of thing.  I don't know what happened
to it.

[Snip stuff on common libs/APIs]

They already exist.  They're gnome-libs and GTK+.  As far as 3d stuff is
concerned I thought I saw an OpenGL GTK+ widget somewhere.  Not sure.

Regards,
Marcus Brubaker
spoon@elpaso.net
http://www.elpaso.net/~spoon

Madame Tracy had even removed most of the Major Arcana from her Tarot card
pack, because their appearance tended to upset people.
        -- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)