Comments, suggestions, "issues" re: Gnome, GMC, E, E-Term, etc (long)

[James Green <gnome cyberstorm demon co uk>]

Hi all,

Firstly, thanks to all who responded to my questions on runlevels and the
screensaver - I've never seen so many replies so soon :)  Those bits are
properly working again.

Now, I've been doing some general usability testing while attemping to do
something constructive (and not revising for exams in the process :). I
have come up with a number of issues I'd like to see resolved.

My system is a RedHat 6.0 (yes, I am brave and yes, it does need a fair
amount of tweaking else all hell breaks loose), Gnome (latest tarballs)
and Enlightenment (DR15.5 tarball), E-Term 0.8.9 tarball, GMC 4.5.31. I
have the panel across the bottom of the screen.

OK, let's see how much I remember:

1. In Enlightenment, you can create a directory (or symlink) called
~/.enlightenment/backgrounds containing all the backgrounds you want
possible on your desktop. When you access them (root menu -> desktop ->
backgrounds) a menu containing thumbnails appear. I have two things to say
about this:

   o  if you have a large number of backgrounds, the menu's width shoots
      across the screen and you have to tentitively 'rub' the mouse
      pointer against the rhs of the menu to move the menu across the
      screen leftwards and access the next pictures. This is very
      cumbersome. Could we have scrollbars for this job at all?

   o  would it be possible to have a configurable option to switch between
      filenames and thumbnails for the display?

2. When a window opens, it observes clearance of the panel correctly.
However, when a dialogue (e.g. yes, no) opens, it very often opens with
half the window below the panel. The effect is to have to drag the
dialogue
up to see the buttons. Very annoying.

3. When a window opens, it quite often can overlap onto another screen,
again very annoying.

4. If (taking the obvious example) Netscape dies, using kill -9 removes
the program, but the gnome-pager's display corrupts, often leaving half
the entry left and messing up the placement of applets to the right ot it.

5. In GMC, could the toolbar be configured as in Windows Explorer such
that the text underneath can be switched off, and thumbnails of the icons
used? This, in conjunction with the Location toolbar being placed on the
same line as the main Toolbar, could lead to greater screenspace. Also in
GMC, could we have a small amount of padding for the information bar at
the bottom, else the far-left character is flush with the lhs of the
window.

5. The Contol Center MIME types caplet isn't very configurable. You cannot
add or remove types, or alter the file extensions. This makes configuring
the actions of .shtml files impossible without a text editor.

6. The Control Center Gnome-Edit capplet does not permit the adding and
removing of applications. Currently, it's stuck on 'gEdit' which of course
is wrong, it should read 'gedit' (note case). This causes the gnome-edit
configuration option to be useless if you want to use gEdit (or gedit as
the executable file is).

7. For the Shut Down or Reboot menu entry, rather than saying "must be
root", could we have a dialogue asking for the root password?

8. The editing of global-options is extreemly annoying for those who
remain in X as a normal user. Could we have a Control Center "Root access"
feature so that menus can be edited, selected users can perform selected
functions (like menu editing, Shut Down/Reboot, etc.)?

9. I note that my Enlightenment Root Menu does not have a GUI
configuration module. Can this be added? I heard in IRC that the menus.cfg
file should be edited, but the only one that exists is in
/usr/local/enlightenment/config/ and this does not match that of my root
menu (I have not altered either).

10. Could E-Term be made so that is uses true-transparancy with options
just to show the background wallpaper or include the display of windows
between in and the background? Surely if you are merely overlaying the
term's display over X, then the memory being used by the wallpaper in the
term currently is no longer used and the term is faster?

11. The Help button on Control Center Startup Programs does nothing.

12. Just what *does* the long bar across the top of the Enlightenment
screen do???

13. In GMC, if you're in your home directory, and want to create a symlink
to, say, /usr/local/apache/htdocs/myweb, you have to go into the target
directory first. Can this be changed so that right-clicking the gmc
display brings up a "New ->" menu that, when opened, displays a list of
MIME types for file/document creation as in Windows Explorer? This would
also allow for Unix-only actions such as symlink creation and so forth.

14. In Enlightenment's Theme capplet, there is no "Add new theme" button.
There is only a list of currently-installed themes. I'm sure before I
upgraded to RH6 (using the sane E-Conf tarball) that such a button
existed.

15. On a similar topic to 14., could we have a "Remove..." button for both
E and Gnome/GTK themes? This would open a new window to remove the
selected theme(s) from the list, or delete them; if the latter and it is
in /usr/local/* then a root-password confirmation dialogue box should
come up.


That's all I can think of for now. I would appreciate comments on these
suggestions, as I am sure the development teams would.

-- 
James Green
http://www.cyberstorm.demon.co.uk/
Home of the demon.tech.modems 56k FAQ.