[gnome-love] Re: GNOME user environment brainstorming

[Cody Russell <bratsche gnome org>]

On 24 May 2001 15:48:04 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Anyway, here's what we came up with.

Hi Havoc, I'm really glad to see this mail.  I'm happy that someone is
now pushing to have things more integrated in this way.  I'd like to
make a couple suggestions as well now that this topic is opened.  Better
integration between the file manager and the panel is one of my main
concerns right now.  Both of them deal with launching of applications
and stuff, but they don't make any attempt to deal with things
similarly, and so GNOME has sort of a non-unified appearance.

1/ Changing your icon for gnome-terminal on the desktop should change
the icon for gnome-terminal on the panel.  Perhaps some sort of
application/document/icon registry in GConf.

2/ We can drag objects from the panel to Nautilus and the desktop, but
we cannot do the opposite.

3/ Editing the foot menu is a long-overdue feature, although it is not
simple.  It should be possible to drag icons to the foot menu, re-order
it, etc.  Dealing with .desktop files sucks.

The problem is that there should be some method for system
administrators to install objects as read-only or something, so they
can't be removed or modified by users.

I've thought about this one already, but haven't really come up with any
fantastic solutions.  If anyone can think of one, I'd be willing to help
work on it.

4/ Let panel launchers and foot menu use any type of object, not just
"programs".  e.g., you might have a launcher for Slashdot or NYTimes.com
on your panel or in your "Favorites" menu.

Technically this is already possible because panel supports launchers
for types "Application", "PanelApplet", and "URL".  This is
insufficient, though, I think.  I think it should transparently handle
this and let you use any type of object.. a better example would be a
"Most Recent Documents" submenu, which might contain Gnumeric or AbiWord
documents.

So, the bottom line here is just better document abstraction and type
registration of some sort.

Regards,
   Cody Russell, bratsche gnome org


--
Cody Russell, bratsche gnome org
http://www.advogato.org/person/bratsche/