Re: From KDE to GNOME. Experiences, suggestions and comments

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Sat, 2006-04-15 at 21:09 +0300, Janne Ojaniemi wrote:
> Regarding the features: I could REALLY like GNOME to have similar
> "network-agnosticsm" as KDE has. Meaning: remote files and folders could
> be worked on just like they were on the local machine. An example: I
> have some photos on a remote FTP-server, and I wanted to import them to
> F-Spot. Now, there just is NO way for F-Spot to directly import those
> photos from the FTP-server. I tried adding a connection beforehand to
> the server, but F-Spot would still not work with it. On KDE it would
> have not made any difference where those files would be. I could have
> imported them straight from the server. To the app, it makes no
> difference that are those files in the local-machine or in a remote
> server. In GNOME I had to first download the pics to the local machine,
> and import them from there. All in all, it was a hassle, and there was
> no reason for it to be so difficult.

GNOME does have the infrastructure for this, and in
fact many applications make use of it.  But for some
reason, applications don't seem to have as widespread
adoption as in KDE.

> I disabled the scheme where mounted devices (USB memory-sticks and CD's
> for example) are shown in the desktop (I like my desktop clean). And it
> works well. But that makes unmounting those devices very difficult. The
> device is shown in "Places", but there is no way to unmount the device
> from there. Nautilus is also opened by default when I plug the device
> in, and it shows the contents of the device. But there is no direct way
> to unmount the device from there either. How can I unmount it then? I
> need to go to the "Computer", right-click on the device there, and
> select "unmount volume". How about making it possible to unmount volumes
> straight from "places" and Nautilus's sidebar?

I think Apple's Finder has a neat way of doing this:

http://caminol10n.mozdev.org/appleglot-how-to/finder-glot-environment.png

Note the little eject buttons next to unmountable
media.

> OK, I just noticed a strange thing... if I have "Places" on the Nautilus
> sidebar, I can't unmount the device from there. But if I change it to
> "Tree", I can then right-click on the device and unmount it. Why the
> difference?

Different code paths, and somebody wasn't looking
closely enough at the differences.  If you file a
bug against Nautilus, I'm sure they'll add Eject
to the context menu in Places.

> Regarding window-management.... There is one feature from KDE that I
> REALLY miss in GNOME: Window-specific settings. Those made things so
> much easier. In KDE I could have certain windows open automatically in
> certain workspaces, making effective use of workspaces really easy. I
> haven't found a way to do that in GNOME yet, which means that when I
> want to have certain app in certain workspace, I either have to go to
> that workspace before I launch the app, or I have to launch the app, and
> automatically move it to the correct workspace. All that could be
> automated in KDE. I could also use the window-specific setting to
> automatically hide windows. When my GNOME-desktop loads, it
> automatically loads GAIM, and it displays a window. I then have to
> manually close that window. In KDE, I could simply tell it to not show
> the window, reducing he amount of needed window-management. 

You want Devil's Pie.  You really do. :)

> Also, if the user rolled the mouse-wheel over the desktop in KDE, it
> automatically switches the workspace. I haven't found similar feature in
> GNOME yet.

This feature has been rejected many times.  It's
not very discoverable, and it's very disruptive
if you do it by accident.  And it's very easy to
do by accident.  You can, by the way, scroll the
mouse wheel over the workspace switcher, rather
than targetting a single little square.

> One more thing: Cut & Paste. Is it just me, or does the UNIX-style
> select & copy work weird in GNOME? If I select a block of text, unselect
> it, and click middle mouse-button in some other app (for example, when
> copying text from Gedit to Evolution compose-window), it does not copy
> the text. I have to leave the text selected in order for middle-button
> copying to work. Is there a way to REALLY make the system copy the text
> to clipboard the moment it's selected? OK, I just tried copying
> addresses from one text-field to another in Evolution, and middle
> mouse-button copying would NOT work. Is there any way to make this work?
> Please? Or is this a distro-problem?

Primary selection is not the clipboard.  It is
entirely seperate.  The clipboard is what you
get with an explicit copy command.  I'm very
pedantic about this becuase there's a lot of
confusion out there.

The handling of primary selection is done by
GTK+, which has a very strict interpretation
of the standard (much to my chagrin).  By the
standard, primary selection means the thing
that is *currently* selected.

I, and quite a few other people, favor doing
something a bit different: Make the primary
selection be the thing that was most recently
selected.  This has two advantages:

1) You can do what you're asking to do.
2) We would no longer have to deselect text in
one application just because text was selected
in another.

> Now, when you read my text, you might think that I have lots of
> complaints. But that's natural, since I used another system for years,
> and I came to appreciate it's features. And when I move to a system that
> does not have them, the complaining starts :). But I DO like GNOME, and
> I will probably stick around using it. But if some future version of
> GNOME would have those pet-features of mine, I would be one happy
> camper :).

Criticism is healthy.  It helps us grow. :)

--
Shaun