[system-tools]Re: Proposal for a new g-c-c menu layout for GNOME 2.8

[Carlos Garnacho <garnacho tuxerver net>]

Hi James :),

El vie, 26-03-2004 a las 10:30, +0800, James Henstridge escribió:
> On 26/03/04 08:22, Carlos Garnacho wrote:
> 
> >Hi all,
> >
> >Here's a proposal for a new control center menu layout, my main
> >objectives are to allow an easier integration of "external" apps into
> >the g-c-c and to somewhat avoid the growing clutter in the menu.
> >
> >my proposal (+ several screenshots to explain it) are in 
> >http://www.ultimaorbita.com/~garnacho/control-center-proposal/
> >
> >There's still no definitive patch for it, but I'll attach one when we
> >arrive to a definitive solution. Any thoughts, opinions, flames?
> >  
> >
> The main problem with the design is that it is a move back to the bad 
> old days for the preferences menu.  Rather than drilling down two levels 
> of menus to get to the common control panels (which some people think is 
> one too many), your design would require going through three levels of 
> menus to get to any control panel at all.  It also makes it easier for 
> people to add lots of extra control panels to the tree, which most 
> people don't see as a benefit.

Well, the design is IMHO more consistent, the current g-c-c structure
has already 2 submenus (Accesibility and Advanced, plus the "System
Tools" submenu, that's not used because it's awkward inside "desktop
preferences") and 13 mixed menu elements (14 if the "language and
culture" applet is compiled), that's IMHO far too many elements inside a
menu, having the disadvantage of being mixed with submenues too. I know
that submenus are considered as evil, but any option is absolutely good,
so we ought to choose the most sane.

BTW, I agree that putting some order will make easier the addition of
more control panels, but I don't think at all that we'll encourage to do
so. IMO we're not here to control what the people do with their third
party applications, we should only care about the apps that are part of
GNOME

> 
> On the subject of where to put things like gnome-system-tools under 
> preferences, what are the benefits of doing this as opposed to having a 
> separate tree? (eg. "System Settings" as on Fedora/Red Hat)  A boot 
> loader configuration tool doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'd want 
> mixed in with per-user settings.  As multi-user systems become more 
> common, I'd think separating out the global and per-user settings would 
> be a good thing.  (eg. Windows XP prompts you to enter the names of all 
> the users who will be using the machine during install and sets up 
> accounts for them).

well, since the beginning the gst were designed for being integrated in
the g-c-c and one of the "major" cons for not including the gst as part
of gnome 2.6 was that they weren't integrated with g-c-c. In the
proposal the system wide tools aren't merged with the per-user tools,
they have their own submenu, I'd even say that they're nowadays more
merged with per-user tools than with the proposal :)

All I'd want is to arrive to a sane menu structure, right now the GNOME
integration of the gst WRT menus is very near to suck, I've moved the
menu elements to and from the g-c-c, and they're now mixed with apps
such as fileroller and gconf-editor, which have absolutely nothing to do
with them. I'd want to stop it :)

	Regards

> 
> James.
> 
> -- 
> Email: james daa com au
> WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/
> 
> 
>