Re: gnome-control-center 2.22 proposals

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 13:51 +0200, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-09-15 at 19:31 +0200, Denis Washington wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > With GNOME 2.20 being in hard code freeze now, I believe it may be time
> > to think about what could be done for gnome-control-center 2.20. In my
> > opinion, we should continue the merging work started for 2.20 (in form
> > of the "Appearance" capplet).
> > 
> thanks for sending the mail, I was going to do it after the 2.20
> release, so better to start ASAP. In fact, I am going to branch for 2.20
> right after the release so that we can start working on new things right
> away.
> 
> > To start the discussion, here is a proposal from me: the "Mouse",
> > "Keyboard" and "Keyboard Accesibility" capplets should be replaced by an
> > "Input Devices" capplet (which incorporates all features of the
> > mentioned dialogs except for keyboard layout management) and a new
> > "Localization" capplet (which, in addition to providing the keyboard
> > layout options, enables the user to choose it's language and locale).
> > 
> > I created mockups for both proposed preferences dialogs. They can be
> > found here:
> > 
> > http://ultimum-projekt.de/mockups/input.html
> > http://ultimum-projekt.de/mockups/i18n.html
> > 
> I like them a lot, but as Sergey said, it's missing all the layout
> options.
> 
> Also:
> * what to do with Typing break? I think it could just be a preferences
> dialog in the typing break itself (that is, no capplet for it), but then
> we need a way to start it. We could either add a single check box to the
> input devices capplet to enable / disable it, or just have it started by
> default (but then, how to re-enable?)

Why can't it stay where it is? Maybe under the "Accessibility" tab.

> * what do we do with keyboard shortcuts? Should it just continue on its
> own?

Probably good to have integrated into a keyboard capplet.

> * Network capplet. Not sure if this is redundant or not, it is for sure
> on opensuse, where you have NetworkManager, but other distros don't use
> it, so, what to do? If kept, we should think about adding more stuff to
> it (like what there is in network-admin from gnome-system-tools) or just
> rename it to Proxy, which sounds quite bad.

NetworkManager doesn't setup Proxies... It could be useful to Totem to
setup network speeds though (it's used for some types of streams when
different sizes are offered in a redirection file).

> * libslab needs an API review as well as the removal of libbonobo usage.
> 
> * g-s-d improvements. We still call xrdb in 3 places, and other startup
> fixes which should make it quicker.

That, and the number of window root filters.

> * about-me needs a good redesign, so what about heading towards
> about-me/online desktop integration? Also, should about-me help manage
> accounts to be used by different apps? That is, it would be nice to have
> a central way for mail, calendar, etc, etc accounts? Maybe this is too
> long term, but it sounds like a good way to make about-me useful.

Accounts sounds a bit too far. It overlaps with gnome-keyring-manager
and seahorse for keys and passwords, and we wouldn't be able to support
complete configuration of, say, mail or chat without intimate knowledge
of the protocols used.

-- 
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>