On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 05:33 -0400, Jacob Beauregard wrote:
> > > In fact I'm of the opinion that we need to somehow open up the
> > > right-click context menu so users should be able to put any
> > > capplets/launchers they use quite a bit.
> >
> > That is what the desktop and panels are for.
>
> What would be the problem with giving more flexibility to the interface of
> something as basic as desktop management, as a whole?
Context menus are for immediate contextual items which are frequently
accessed. Theme and resolution are not that.
> > > A lot of people like me who come from windows would be looking for
> > > things in familiar places.
> >
> > We don't cater for Windows users, we cater for GNOME users.
>
> You offer an argument similar to not using a QWERTY board. Why do we have an
> icon of a floppy disk for saving anyway? My laptop doesn't have a drive for
> that :(.
My save icon is an arrow pointing at a box. This is exactly why the
Tango icon theme banned the use of a floppy disk as an image.
> The question is, what is the familiarity of most GNOME users? Is it in Windows
> or in GNOME itself? Do GNOME users even utilize the right-click context menu,
> and would adding such an element to that context menu be a constraint to the
> GNOME population?
Adding items which the majority of people would never use would be a bad
move, imho.
> Chill out, and at least pretend you actually know what you're doing.
Nice.
> Note that added flexibility would make the questions above a little bit less
> relevant (though, I'd still probably leave it to Windows-Wannabe distros to
> modify their own default settings to accommodate their users).
What are we talking about now? The ability to add arbitrary entries to
the desktop context menu? That is possible by adding an entry to the
Nautilus scripts folder, but note how they are in a submenu so that they
don't take over the context menu.
> > > The modesetting display capplet in notification tray, the whole of
> > > display properties so one can change things on the fly, seeing a
> > > movie, seeing a .pdf etc. hence atleast to me it makes sense.
> >
> > Why would you change resolution manually when you want a movie, or read
> > a PDF? I'm still struggling to see a use-case for frequent resolution
> > changes. I change resolution relatively frequently (when I connect my
> > external monitor), but I have a tool which changes resolution, font
> > size, wallpaper and so on in a single keypress.
>
> Yea, I've got that external monitor case, too. There are also a few games that
> like to add constraints to the resolution you can use.
Every game I've used changes resolution itself. Interesting that there
are some which don't. That's a bug in the game of course, should GNOME
add an extra menu item to the desktop context menu because there are
some buggy games?
> > > I find it extremely challenging to traverse through 3 menus in order
> > > to get a simple thing done, hence if the display capplet is there
> > > which has everything from brightness, contrast,
> > > resolution-modesetting, themes etc. it would be pretty cool
> >
> > Brightness and contrast are monitor settings, GNOME can't control those.
>
> Would a device driver possibly have control over these?
No idea, I don't have the EDID specification to hand. If it were
possible and if X exposed it, then it could be added to the Display
capplet.
> > That leaves resolution and theme. Thomas Wood is working on an
> > Appearance capplet which covers themes, colours, and fonts. I've been
> > planning on adding ICC profile selection to the Resolution capplet which
> > would make it a Display capplet.
>
> If I wanted to switch my res from 1680x1050 to 1280x1024, would GNOME be
> responsible for handling when my screen gets stretched rather than certain
> parts getting ignored (I really doubt it, but such a thing could probably be
> hacked anyway).
I've never had the screen be ignored when expanded: nautilus notices the
resize and draws the wallpaper there, the panel expands to fill the
extra space, and metacity will place windows. If you can replicate
GNOME refusing to use space, then you've found a bug in X.
I believe there is a SoC project to write a GNOME interface to the new
XRANDR interface, which will handle hotplugging displays.
Ross
--
Ross Burton mail: ross burtonini com
jabber: ross burtonini com
www: http://www.burtonini.com./
PGP Fingerprint: 1A21 F5B0 D8D0 CFE3 81D4 E25A 2D09 E447 D0B4 33DF
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part