Great idea to enhance future versions of the GNOME desktop environment

[Ian MacGregor <ardchoille gmail com>]

Hello,
 I have been using GNOME since GNOME 2.10 and I love it so. This is the
best desktop environment I have used in my several years being in Linux!
GNOME is fast, easy and friendly, and I have an idea to make it even
more so.

A centralized control center:
I have noticed that there is a gnome control center (available by typing
gnome-control-center in a terminal), however, that control center seems
to be only a page of icons that call other apps. Clicking on "themes" in
the gnome-control-center simply calls gnome-theme-manager. I feel there
should be two centralized controls centers; one for the user and another
for system apps.


The user control center:
The user control center would consist of a tabbed window with each tab
containing the ui of other tweaks inside each tab. For instance,
clicking on the "themes" tab in the user control center would show a
clone of gnome-theme-manager inside the tab instead of doing an "exec
gnome-theme-manager" or whatever the current gnome-control-center uses
to call the gnome-theme-manager. The user control center ui would have
tabs for all the ui's contained in System -> Preferences.


The system control center:
The system control center would be the exact same as the user control
center except that the system control center would have a tab for each
of the tasks contained in System -> Administration.


Reason:
The reason for these two control centers is so that the user only has to
remember a single command (e.g. gnome-user-controls or
gnome-system-controls) or menu item (e.g. System -> User Controls or
System -> System Controls). I run the ##gnome channel on
irc.freenode.net and it seems that this would help us better support the
GNOME desktop due to being able to tell users to "open the System
Control Center and go to the GDM tab".


I am currently learning python, pygtk and how to design ui's with
glade2, and I am realising how easy it would be to design the ui's for
these two control centers. I don't currently have the expertise to write
a complete control center, otherwise I would write the whole thing
myself and contact the GNOME devs to see if they would be interested in
including this idea into a future version. However, I am very good with
writing documentation and would be willing to work with a design group
to assist in implementing the docs for these control centers.

Is it possible that a group of coders/devs can implement this? It seems
this would greatly enhance the usability of this awesome desktop
environment. Should I be posting this idea elsewhere as well?

Thanks for listening

Ian MacGregor (aka ardchoille)
-- 
MacGregor Despite Them!