Re: preferences, sessions, etc. notes

[Glynn Foster <glynn foster ireland sun com>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:
>
> Things users might want to do

I know this is the day and age where usability is the big thing around
here...and really we should be designing a desktop for the users etc etc...
But I think we should also think what system administrators might want to
do ie. 
 - completely lock down configuration right across the desktop
 - administer settings across the desktop
 - decide which settings should be global across all users
 - decide which settings should be only used by a select group of users

etc, etc.

>  (pure speculation)
> 
>  - have state specific to a display (monitor/mouse/keyboard
>    combination, i.e. typically a single physical computer)
>  - explicitly create a set of apps that normally launch when they log
>    in
>  - have these apps they saved come up at a specific size/position
>  - be able to log out, and log in again, automatically/implicitly
>    restoring the apps they had open on logout
>  - have apps restore their size/position each time they are launched,
>    a la MacOS (different from restoring size/pos of a particular
>    instance, as with session management)
>  - temporarily log out, let someone else log in, then go back
>    to their session (as with Windows XP)

/me agrees with everything suggested thus far

> A sampling of preferences, settings, state, whatever
> ===
> 
> panel -
>   - animation speed for hiding
>   - tile style
>   - size of icons in menus
>   - menu contents
>   - keybindings
> 
> properties of specific panels -
>   - panel type
>   - size

I'd also add what types of launchers and applets are available on various 
panels.

[snipped examples of other apps]

> Current infrastructure

[snip]

> Archiver: stores XML files with date-stamped dumps of current state,
> and can stuff the snapshot from any date back into the config
> system. (right?)

I still can't figure out the usefulness of the archiver. It seems just a 
way of doing multiple undos throughout time and in the age of having 
dialogs that are simple according to usability needs, is this such a 
feature to have? I need convincing I guess...

> Questions

to which I don't know the answer :(


				see ya,
					Glynn :)