Re: gnome-control-center 2.22 proposals

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 14:55 +0200, Denis Washington wrote:
> 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.
> 
> See my reply to Sergey.
> 
> > 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?)
> 
> I would try to make typing break a separate utility app; I don't know
> how to integrate it sanely with the Input Devices capplet, I doubt
> anybody will look there for typing break,

As I said, the a11y part of the capplet might be a better place.

> > * what do we do with keyboard shortcuts? Should it just continue on its
> > own?
> 
> I would leave it as separate capplet, as it also doesn't fit well into a
> general Input Devices capplet IMO.

Can't we split keyboard and mouse/other input devices? We'd probably
want better integration of:
- mouse emulation buttons
- synaptics touchpads
- wacom tablets
- joysticks/joypads
- possibly other types of remote controls

and that would just overcrowd an input capplet. A keyboard is a very
different input device, even though it's handled by the same subsystem.

> > * 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.
> 
> Ubuntu also uses NetworkManager and others will probably follow, so we
> might be able to assume it's availability by time GNOME 2.22 is
> released. The best would be if it would be made a GNOME dependency.

That doesn't fix the fact that setting up proxies isn't handled by
NetworkManager...

> > * 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.
> 
> That would be cool. about-me is pretty much useless in the moment, it
> would be great if that changed.

Some integration into a Mugshot style account system, or the ability to
move those accounts to and fro Mugshot or another social networking site
would be useful.

Maybe it should be clear that the info in about-me is the "exported"
info. Information that might be made available to other users, as
opposed to being used to set up chat and mail accounts locally, which is
just about impossible to support.

-- 
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>