Re: gnome-control-center's future

["Scott Reeves" <SReeves novell com>]

Here is a short overview of the “slab” module in gnome cvs.  For the purposes of integrating this code into the existing gnome-control-center we can view it as providing 2 pieces - shell and tiles.

SHELL - contains the individual tiles and provides - (pic #1)
filter
interactive - as you type it updates the available tiles and groups (pic #2)
searches on Name, GenericName, and Exec entries in the .desktop file
can eliminate menu hunting as you just for example type “keyboard” to see what is available. (pic #3)
even when you know where an item lives (IE menu navigation, not menu hunting) it's actually usually faster to launch item via filter compared to usual menu or mouse navigation. For example just type “fo <enter>” to launch the font capplet. (pic #4)

groups
uses libmenu which parses Categories entry in each .desktop file and classifies them into groups according to preferences.menu.  Modified menu file to have 4 groups - “Hardware, Look and Feel, Personal, System”
clicking on individual group scrolls the right pane to show that set of tiles and highlights the set. (pic #5)

Common Tasks - reads a gconf key to show list of common tasks. Some tasks launch capplets already contained in the right pane while others launch distro specific things like YaST.

right pane of tiles, sorted by category.


TILES
generated from each .desktop file and show Name, Generic Name, and Icon	
provide via right click (or Shift-F10) a common menu of actions such as help or upgrade. upgrade for example checks the package management system to see if there is a new version in the repository. (pic #6)


“slab” module layout and usage.
mainly consists of 2 libraries, 3 applications that use those libraries
libtile - provides tile functionality
libslab - provides generic shell functionality
control-center - small piece that sets up the control center using libslab
application-browser  - ignore it for this discussion, sets up the AB on sled using the generic slab/lib* libraries. provides similar functionality with all apps installed on the box as the control-center does with all capplets. (pic #7)
main-menu - Provides the panel entry that is the main access point in SLED. provides launching point for AB and CC. (pic #8)

initial thought is that we would want to replace gnome-control-center with slab/control-center and just link against the slab libtile and libslab libraries.

http://www.gnome.org/~rodrigo/pic1.jpg 
http://www.gnome.org/~rodrigo/pic2.jpg 
http://www.gnome.org/~rodrigo/pic3.jpg 
http://www.gnome.org/~rodrigo/pic4.jpg 
http://www.gnome.org/~rodrigo/pic5.jpg 
http://www.gnome.org/~rodrigo/pic6.jpg 
http://www.gnome.org/~rodrigo/pic7.jpg 
http://www.gnome.org/~rodrigo/pic8.jpg 

>>> Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo novell com> 8/23/2006 9:21 AM >>>
On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 15:18 +0200, Denis Washington wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I wanted to ask a question about the control center: will SLED's control 
> center be integrated int gnomecc? Or will the gnome-control-center be 
> improved? I was working on the latter option, but now I'd like to ask 
> about it so I don't do any redundant work.
> 
we are right now waiting for Scott Reeves (SLED's slab author) to tell
us about the steps needed for integrating his code. So yeah, we'll
probably integrate it, if there are no big problems found.
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo novell com>

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