Re: gnome-panel & gnome-applets?

[William Jon McCann <william jon mccann gmail com>]

Hi Carlos,

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Carlos Garcia Campos
<carlosgc gnome org> wrote:
> Excerpts from Frederic Peters's message of jue dic 23 10:22:40 +0100 2010:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Sergey Udaltsov wrote:
>> > I am confused, what's the story with gnome-panel and gnome-applets in
>> > 3.0? Are they in, are they out? If gnome 3 is to support gnome2 compat
>> > mode, both of these components should stay in for some while, right?
>> > Currently, the situation in in jhbuild is very strange: gnome-panel is
>> > still there, gnome-applets are gone. Is this planned? Who'd need the
>> > panel without the applets?
>>
>> I pointed this after the new modulesets were pushed, you can read the
>> answer Jon gave here:
>>  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2010-December/msg00004.html
>>
>> The relevant part:
>>
>> | >>  - gnome-applets (even if we still have gnome-panel)
>> |
>> | RIP.  Essential applets should be part of gnome-panel itself.  It
>> | doesn't make sense to have applets only in the gnome 2 fallback
>> | experience.
>
> I disagree. If I run gnome-session with the classic mode I expect to
> see exactly what I have right now, with all the applets. The
> definition of essential applet is probably different for every user.
> GNOME 2 fallback experience should be gnome-panel, metacity and
> gnome-applets.

It is important to note that there is no such "classic mode".  There
is a fallback mode for when 3D support is not available.  The fact
that it will use some of the GNOME 2 components is mostly an
implementation detail - it is way more efficient than building
something else.  (That said, I think someone could hack up a simple
panel + system status equivalent in javascript in no more than a few
weeks if they wanted to.  And I think that would actually be
preferable for a number of reasons.)

There is no "I want a new GNOME but not GNOME 3 mode."  There aren't
two GNOMEs - only the one we barely have enough help designing,
building, and testing already.  If you want your system to be exactly
as it is now my recommendation would be to leave it just as it is now.

It doesn't make any sense for the user to have an entirely different
concept in the fallback that isn't available in the default.  Nor does
it make any sense for us to provide a developer API and add-on system
that only works in the fallback mode.

GNOME 3 is a change.  Both the default and the fallback modes will be
different from GNOME 2.  We can't and shouldn't shy away from that.
People who don't desire such changes are not obligated to make them.

Cheers,
Jon