Re: Building the default desktop

[Mark McLoughlin <mark skynet ie>]

Hey,
	I guess you're looking for confirmation or something :-)

On Fri, 2003-07-25 at 03:31, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 10:02:07PM -0400, Chris Geddings wrote: 
> > Question 1:
> > -----------
> > The basis of what I want is to set a default background, configure
> > default desktop icons, and most importantly, configure two default
> > panels, one a menu panel, and the other an edge panel.  With the edge
> > panel, I will need to put certain launchers on there.
> > 
> > Now, I am pretty sure, at this point, that I can take the
> > panel-per-panel-config-nolaptop.schemas file in /etc/gconf/schemas from
> > my rhl 9 system, modify it, and be good to go.  (Though modifying it
> > will be a little less pleasant than it sounds.)  My question is this. 
> > The docs sorta seemed to indicate that the small and large screen
> > settings were basically not relevant, and may be there just as a
> > "future" kind of thing.  Is this accurate?  Can I just work with the
> > "medium" sets in my schema file?  Or, can I just do the medium, and then
> > copy its results out, changing the relevant parts from "medium" to
> > "small" and "large" as appropriate?
> 
> I believe this is right, small/large aren't used. 

	Yeah, the small/large thing was this idea we had where you might want a
different default panl setup on different size screens. Kind of on crack
and it never got implemented properly anyway ...


> > Question 2:
> > -----------
> > I'm working with a ton of users.  Not all users will be using gnome, but
> > it is not predictable to me which ones will and which ones will not, so
> > I can't prime their accounts with stuff.  (Well, that is part of why.) 
> > This is why I'll do as much as I can from within the gconf defaults &&
> > mandatory settings.
> > 
> > If a user has not reconfigured their panels, and I add a launcher to one
> > of the default panels later, will they pick that up?
> > 
> > If that is a yes, then, if they do change some details about the panels,
> > but leave the panel itself there (but maybe add or remove launchers from
> > the default panel config), will my added launcher show up?
> 
> I believe the answer is that if they've logged in with GNOME their
> panel will have been saved, and that includes a list of launchers on
> it. So if you add a launcher it won't be in the list and they won't
> see it.

	Yep ... and the panel even goes so far as to make a copy of the.
.desktop files so the user won't even see any changes you make to the
.desktop files for the launchers on his panel.

> You could of course write a script that added the launcher for each
> user.

	And its pretty straightforward too:

	* Create a dir: 

/apps/panel/profiles/default/objects/$(launcher_id) 

	  with the config for your launcher

	* Then add it to the object list in:

/apps/panel/profiles/default/general/object_id_list

	   and if this is the 2.4 panel you'll see it appear on the panel,
otherwise for 2.2 you'll need to restart the panel.

Good Luck,
Mark.