On GNOME 3.0 features

[Giovanni Campagna <scampa giovanni gmail com>]

[Resending because the first message seems lost]

Today the set of expected features for GNOME 2.34 / 3.0 System Settings
(former Control Center) has been revealed on the wiki.

As expected, some functionality was moved, some was added, and some was
killed. Unfortunately, as a daily GNOME user, I find some removal
questionable.
In particular:

- why all the theming stuff is optional?
All operating systems and desktop environments, including the most
minimal wms, have some theming support.
Also, not all people have the same tastes: some like Clearlooks, some
like Humanity, some use Murrine, some use QtCurve. I for example like
the current GNOME 2.0 default, and would like to use it even for GNOME
3.0 if the future theme doesn't suit me. 
Thirdly, different distros have different defaults, and the theme is one
of the most prominent detail in the UI, but users should not pick their
distro based on the theme!

- why no provision for setting Metacity themes, Gtk themes and icon
themes independently?

Those (and Shell themes, btw) are mostly independent settings, people
should be free to make their preferred combination, without tweaking
with .theme files or dconf-editor.

- the repeat key setting is necessary

Move it to the accessibility panel if you prefer, but it is needed, for
the same reason we have StickyKeys and BounceKeys: some people are
unable to press the same key in succession, some on the other hand keep
their keys pressed to long (and enter duplicated chars every time).

- you cannot ditch the Preferred Applications panel

Not only the EU mandated multiple browser choice in a competing OS,
people want to choose among Epiphany (GNOME default), Firefox (distro
default), Chromium (or Chrome, if they don't care) or even Konqueror.
Terminal selection may be less of an issue, but on the other hand people
want the choice between Rythmbox or Banshee, Totem or MPlayer. I agree
that the accessibility tab is not needed now (handled by Universal
Access panel).
Actually, I would like to see this panel extended with default
application setting for every file type, so that an existing file and a
nautilus property page is not needed for this. (Command line setting is
even worse, unless you know the application desktop id).

- why handling the System Monitor as a System Setting panel?

It is an independent tool (like baobab, palimpsest, gnome-nettool,
dconf-editor...), deserves to live in Applications -> System Tools.

Now some personal curiosities:

- will the Web Accounts panel include current "Messaging and VoIP
Accounts" capplet (provided by Empathy + Mission Control)? Should it be
renamed "Online services" to be include social accounts (libsocialweb,
libgwibber, GNU Social)

- will Samba shares and NFS mounts handled by Privacy and Sharing? What
about RDP / VNC (currently marked '?')?

- are there plans (long term) for a Security panel, including PolicyKit
configuration, firewall (iptables) and the like?

- will Network replace nm-connection-editor, thus configuring
NetworkManager only? Or some sort of pluggable backend will be
introduced for distro which don't ship NM?

- similarly, will Users Accounts be tied to the accountservice or will
it use the System Tools Backend? Or maybe it will use a system tool
backend itself using the accountsservice instead of going directly
to /etc/passwd?

- how do you plan the Services capplet will work with systemd, upstart
and sysvinit, each having a different model and implementation of what
is service, how it is started and how it is configured?

- in the end, are the GNOME System Tools about to die?

Thanks in advance for your answers,

Giovanni