The Gnome Wish List

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1. 2003-12-09 11:05 pm

   Anonymous

   Excellent article! Very comprehensive and any desktop will need all that you suggested in order to succeed. All the pieces of the puzzle are now in place, it just has to be put together.

   Maybe not most the important item from the list, but something that not many others have suggested is Quick Lounge’s funcitonality. I would definitely love to see it in the panel!
2. 2003-12-09 11:13 pm

   Anonymous

   I really miss network transparancy like efs from Emacs or KDE. I can open a file on FTP server and edit it transparently on both Emacs and kate or gideon, but this is lacking on Gnome.

   Also while I am at it, I could not belive that I had to put my FTP account password on the Nautilus URL bar for everybody to see in order to open a FTP site !!!
3. 2003-12-09 11:15 pm

   Anonymous

   Can we expecta KDE wishlist soon? I think that however, several things on the GNOME wishlist would apply to KDE. Please make one, you usually know very well what areas are lacking in UI especially.
4. 2003-12-09 11:23 pm

   Anonymous

   As much as I love gaim, it lacks some important features:

   first of all: file transfers. As of now – they don’t exist at all! Why not use some code from the licq/amsn apps, and just implement it under the gaim UI?

   other things, which I consider minor, but still worth mentioning: contacts in ICQ, and Images in MSN.

   On a totally different term, I think GNOME should also consider making more microsoft things work – I don’t mean Internet Explorer, but it’d be nice if for instance one could use GnomeMeeting to connect to users of Windows Messenger, and so on. Even though the codecs are proprietary, people that own them should be allowed to use them in an easy way.

   oh, and BUGS BUGS BUGS!
5. 2003-12-09 11:23 pm

   Anonymous

   I think a Gnome Dialer for modems is really missing. Even if not many of us or almost everybody hasn´t a modem connection to the internet, such a feature is needed just in case of …
6. 2003-12-09 11:24 pm

   Anonymous

   Pretty good article Eugenia — interesting points raised.

   While GNOME’s work on their HIG and related stuff has been good to see, they’ve missed some really elementary features that have been present in other desktops for years.

   For instance, alphabetical keybindings on the main menu; this means you pop up the menu, then hit “P” for Programs, “I” for internet and “E” for Epiphany etc. It’s an excellent time-saver for power users, and saves messing around with the mouse. Currently, you have to use the cursor keys in GNOME, or move your hands from the keyboard to the mouse, which takes up so much more time.

   So, IceWM has this. KDE has this. Heck, Windows 95 had this EIGHT years ago! For proper usability, a decent environment for power-users, this is essential. Working efficiently and productively means good keybindings.

   (Oh, and being able to move windows above the top of the screen would be great too on lower resolutions. GNOME is unusable with many apps without this option.)

   M
7. 2003-12-09 11:26 pm

   Anonymous

   Yes, you are right, a modem dialer is really needed. I didn’t think of it because I am on broadband, but you are absolutely right it is needed. Thx.
8. 2003-12-09 11:27 pm

   Anonymous

   Viewports…what are those? I’ve used linux since 1994 and have heard of viewports, but never knew what they were for.
9. 2003-12-09 11:28 pm

   Anonymous

   I have to agree that the beta GTK File Selector is bad; it’s almost as though it was made as a joke. Who in their right makes “Frobnicate the file” an option?? Apart from the fact that it is a very uncommon word that means “tweak”, the option itself doesn’t make any sense to me; what exactly does it do? I think I see where they are going with the “bookmarks” idea, but it seems really out of place. Lastly, I hope that they don’t have a single arrow and all of that blank space at the top in the final version.
10. 2003-12-09 11:30 pm

    Anonymous

    You can have a window open half on one workspace and half on the other workspace. Apparently pretty handy for developers, but bad for overall casual user usability.
11. 2003-12-09 11:40 pm

    Anonymous

    Excellent article, you raise many agreeable points.

    Aside from a couple things that both kde _and_ gnome could

    use improvements on, and aside from a couple specific apps
    you mentioned – it sounds like you want gnome to be more
    like kde.

    I’m guessing that if kde finally got around to creating a
    theme or two and an icon-set or two that looked a little
    more “gnomeish”, a _lot_ of people would become happy
    converts. One other thing that I’m pretty certain of, is
    that much of the gnome-ism comes simply from the fact that
    it appears to have stronger backing from large companies –
    so people think it’s going to some how be/become more
    “legit”.

    I’m using KDE 3.2(beta2/cvs) and it honestly rocks. I was
    using gnome quite extensively since 2.4 was released, but
    it just never satisfied, for alot reasons. KDE merely
    fails to satisfy on a few reasons.

    There certainly is more than a couple things that kde
    definitely can improve on (and it is), but with the
    release of 3.2, I really think that it just leaped miles
    ahead gnome, gnome 2.6 will still be behind. And just wait
    in a couple months when all the kde PIM features that
    couldn’t get released on time w/ the official 3.2 dist are
    delivered.

    One thing KDE could use is a distro that concentrates
    entirely on pure KDE, one that provides an out-of-the-box
    default kde experience which attends to some of the
    vanilla kde issues.

    Hopefully you will do another article for a KDE Wish List,
    if so, please be sure to use the latest 3.2 available to
    base your wishes.

    Cheers! And I hope all your gnome wishes come true!
12. 2003-12-09 11:41 pm

    Anonymous

    Eugenia,

    Well, since you’ve now done a wish list for GNOME, can you please do a wish list for KDE…?

    Don’t see how this is off topic!

    Michael Lauzon, Founder

    The Quill Society

    http://www.quillsociety.org/

    [email protected]
13. 2003-12-09 11:42 pm

    Anonymous

    > it sounds like you want gnome to be more like kde.

    Definately not. I want the developer tools and some of the architecture of KDE, but definately not the UI and its bloat.

    >Hopefully you will do another article for a KDE Wish List,

    As I replied earlier, I am preparing a KDE 3.2b2 preview article.
14. 2003-12-09 11:44 pm

    Anonymous

    I can accomplish pretty much everything I want to using Gnome 2.4.1 and whilst I would like new features to play with an enhance my experience, the one key thing they should focus on that will make everybody happy is efficiency.

    Mozilla starts up is less than 2 seconds, if that. Epiphany can take up to 5 or 6 seconds yet it is supposed to be native, leaner, and meaner.

    Many of the smaller applications, like the calculator or most of the games, take more than 5 seconds to start when they should be nearly instantaneous.

    There needs to be a concerted effort on the speed and efficiency of Gtk2 and the apps that use it. Then people will have a snappier, quicker desktop and implicitly a better Gnome experience.
15. 2003-12-09 11:44 pm

    Anonymous

    This is just the pit of an iceberg that Eugenia has mentioned here. There are even more trivial things such as copying stuff from FTP to your harddisk that doesn’t work properly. Try connecting to ftp://ftp.gnome.org and copy a subdir with mixed entries (files and directories) to your system and you get something like (copying file 87 of 12) and wonder why it’s copying more files than existing. Or if you copy large dirs which are for example 15mb then you will only get 6mb of it and the rest will be copied as 0byte files.

    I am not a friend of adding all these bindings to GNOME, on the one hand it offers the possibility for authors to write programs in the language they prefer but on the otherhand it makes things more complex. She has mentioned that things as GTK are really slow but please thing in the future, as soon as you add more libraries, more bindings, more languages into the middle of GNOME as soon you make the general operation become slower (noticable during execution and startup time).

    A bunch of things inside GNOME can be fixed or cleaned up but what benefits does fixing stuff and cleaning up things give one when the supplied framework of the broken thing is not optimal in first case. It’s like fixing a bit here, a bit there and something on another place but it’s no optimal solution. A better solution would be to to trash that framework and go for a better one.

    Nautilus is an example itself here – it feels nothing complete but nothing half. Same for Evolution which is NOT following the GNOME HIG here (which raises the question what purpose the HIG has at the end) the Toolbar (to give an example) is still not following the Menu&Toolbar preferences system (Text only, Icons only, Text besides Icons, Text below Icons) and things like this.

    Eugenia brought up the user visible/annoying problems which she detected over the months using GNOME, the real technical problems can only be seen by someone who knows the underlaying framework of GNOME.

    E.g. it’s hard comparing Anjuta/Glade with KDevelop for example because to get an application with the quality of KDevelop you first need to screw (technically/engeneering) at the framework.
16. 2003-12-09 11:49 pm

    Anonymous

    > >> it sounds like you want gnome to be more like kde.

    >Definately not. I want the developer tools and some of the architecture of KDE, but definately not the UI and its bloat.

    Is this a result of of KDE or Qt?
17. 2003-12-09 11:50 pm

    Anonymous

    Both. Wait for my article in 1-2 days.

    Please let’s stay focused on the article here, which is a Gnome article, not a KDE one.
18. 2003-12-09 11:51 pm

    Anonymous

    Very nice article, Eugenia. I think you are right about a new cd/dvd recorg program for gnome, since it must be integrated with the file manager. But in general, I don’t feel there is a need to have apps made with a specific toolkit. There is a need for more standards and integration.

    BTW, did you check Craig Drummond excellent work on GtkQt?

    http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=6954

    It gives you theme integration between desktops: fonts and themes mathing, bluecurve, keramik, and others. Unfortunately, it only works from the kde panel to gtk, and not the other way around. It is a hack, not a standard. But, hey, in this sense, bluecurve is a hack too (making different stuff look the same).

    Eugenia, I think you still could influence KDE 3.2 usability. Some changes that are considered usability bigfixes can still be accepted. So please, give us a well argumented and carefull analysis of KDE 3.2 beta2. (As you usually do.)

    Cheers,

    Carlos Woelz
19. 2003-12-10 12:09 am

    Anonymous

    I made the switch from being a big KDE fan to being a bigger Gnome fan with Slackware 9.0. It was there, I tried it out, and I feel like Gnome is much more slick and professional. (to give an idea of where I’m coming from, I’m a huge OSX fan) The problem is that KDE is in a lot of ways more mature. There are lots more default apps, and many more tools. Gnome is picking these parts up at a fairly rapid pace, and one reason I prefer Gnome is I feel like these apps are of better quality.

    At any rate, one of the biggest problems I have with Gnome is the menu. Editing it can be very cumbersome.

    I’m also really interested in seeing Totem and Rhythmbox integrated into Gnome. KDE does a much better job of out of the box click on the app and it runs.

    And as mentioned in the article, Samba browsing is just broken. Badly. Sometimes I can put in a user and pass on a freely shared directory, and it might let me in. Sometimes it just says it can’t find it. And if I click on an mp3 on a remote drive to play it, that never will happen. These issues really need to get fixed. People are relying on these network transparency features more and more, and they are non-existant in Gnome.

    In terms of the included apps comparision with KDE, the biggest hole is in the control panel. I really like the mentioned idea of making it similar to OSX’s control panel, and it needs to control more. Sometimes when X won’t behave I just hop into KDE and use the cumbersome control center to fix it.

    Great artilce Eugenia, and I hope they pick up some of your ideas!
20. 2003-12-10 12:15 am

    Anonymous

    One thing I like about Windows that I haven’t seen in any distro is that the close button can be clicked on when your mouse cursor is in the absolute top right hand corner of the screen. I like the ability to haphazardly move my mouse there with a flick of the wrist, click the left button, and the window is gone. In all the distros I have tried (RedHat, Slackware etc), there is a gap of a few pixels which means you actually have to point at the button, rather than being able to just flick your wrist in its general direction.

    I don’t really know much about this sort of thing – is this something to do with the theme, the window manager or perhaps the DE? Would I be able to modify an existing theme to enable me to do this?

    Matt
21. 2003-12-10 12:17 am

    Anonymous

    This depends on the theme, but I do agree that the default theme should have this feature. It might not look as nice as another design, but it can be practical.

    Same goes for the Gnome menu button.
22. 2003-12-10 12:20 am

    Anonymous

    >> it sounds like you want gnome to be more like kde.

    > Definately not. I want the developer tools and some of

    > the architecture of KDE, but definately not the UI and

    > its bloat.

    [note: the following is _not_ in any way a troll]

    ( and I just read in a newer post that you request we keep

    the discussion to gnome… well, I’m gonna send this

    anyhow ‘cuz I already wrote it; guess you’ll mod it down )

    Lets break your statement down a bit:

    1 – “… but definately not the UI and its bloat”

    A truly arguable assertment… I have to guess that when

    you say “bloat”, you’re talking the backed architecture

    and libs – bloated as in, there’s _lots_ of it, not

    bloated as in slow and sluggish. I can confirm with my

    own direct experiences using both extensively, that KDE

    is defintely _not_ slower than gnome, and in fact often

    seems faster – *especialy* when built from source, and

    after being prelinked. So let’s be fair and say that

    speedwise, they’re comparable.

    So if you mean “bloat”, as in “tons of architecture,

    libs, and dependencies – then I’m curious in knowing

    which parts/components of kde you find expendable? As

    quoted from one of the berlin/fresco guys, on the

    subject of using corba – something along the lines of:

    “it’s not bloat if you’re using all the features”.

    You also mention the UI – you don’t like it? The look?

    Something a mere theme and a new iconset could rectify?

    2 – “I want the developer tools and some of the

    architecture of KDE”

    Hmm… well, I know that you must understand that the

    reason why that architecture, those tools, and those

    apps are even available, let alone that they’re so far

    advanced and extensible and feature-rich, is _strictly_

    due to all that “bloat” you have issue with. This does

    not compute.

    What I can see, is that it would be far easier, quicker

    and realistic to solve a couple of kde’s issues, that it

    could ever possibly be to get these things you like about

    kde into gnome.

    Here’s what kde could use to address your concerns:

    A focused distribution that takes the standard vanilla KDE

    and simply delivers it in a more asthetic and approachable

    package. This would kill the issue people have with the

    fact that they often need to spend alot of time getting

    kde to look/act the way they want before they can start

    working.

    A new theme and icon set – something more “professional”,

    or “sharp”. I would love to see this myself – I have a

    really hard time with kde’s general “fluffy”/”colorfull”

    look and feel. And as we can all plainly see – looks are

    everything. I bet if kde stayed _exactly_ the way it was,

    but looked just like gnome… there’d be *alot* more kde

    users…

    Finally, to address your “bloat” problem, kde could use a

    much better and refined/configurable build/install routine

    that allows the user/distro to control exactly which bits

    get installed and which dont. Though, initialy, the

    focused distro I mentioned first could take care of this

    easy enough.

    Of course, continuing the effort toward the usability

    guidlines are also important… but thats already happening.

    These few things mentioned above are quite simple and

    totally in the realm of possibility within a limited time

    frame. To get gnome to change in much of the manner

    mentioned in your wish list would take _much_ more effort

    and time… at least to do right.

    Cheers
23. 2003-12-10 12:26 am

    Anonymous

    Dang, talk about not reading it right.

    Forget about it.

    Ignore my comment.

    Boy, is it embarrassing….

    Anyway, my wishlist

    – New file dialogs. Can’t stand the old ones.

    – One unified HTML component instead of 2 (or 3 when Evolution is put in the mix), like KHTML

    – A bit far off, but, handwritting recogniction, for Tablet users….

    – Something like iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes. I still mention iTunes cause Rhtymnbox acts more like WinAMP 1.0
24. 2003-12-10 12:26 am

    Anonymous

    She did not mean architectural bloat, she meant UI (User Interface) bloat as in too many often irrelevant options or poor UI design in general. To some extent I agree that KDE has a few useless options for 85% of the people and the interface is sometimes too cluttered, especially the toolbars and contextmenus. Thankfully, KDE developers are aware of the problems and are working on them.
25. 2003-12-10 12:30 am

    Anonymous

    Well I must admit that your reply does make a lot of sense. Looking at a neutral point of view then I do share all your points here. Unfortunately it’s not always easy to make comparison between two Desktop Environments while you are not allowed to at least do the comparison in a sane manner. And to get my word on it. It’s no troll it’s simply a fact. Sure both Desktop Environments needs to improve. The question is which one has the easier way to go.
26. 2003-12-10 12:32 am

    Anonymous

    Good article.

    I agreed with the comment about window sizing and moving. That one thing prevents me from using Gnome at present. I like the way it looks, but I CANNOT use it if some of the windows are going to be larger than the screen with no way to move it around to get to the buttons (as with ALT-mouse in KDE).

    This isn’t a biggie, but here’s another annoyance: I really, really wish Gnome would let you set different background images for the different desktops. Not everyone would prefer that, I know, but it should be an option. People like me who power-use different desktops for different tasks LIKE being able to set up each differently.

    Finally, I agree that Gnome needs a dialer. But those who say that most people don’t use dialup are mistaken; it depends on the region!! In some parts of the world (even here in the USA), most people — the VAST majority — still use a dialup PPP connection to get onto the internet. Many people CAN’T get DSL in the USA, where there are large, rural regions too far from a local exchange.
27. 2003-12-10 12:34 am

    Anonymous

    > She did not mean architectural bloat, she meant UI (User Interface) bloat

    Ah, I see… I read that wierd, thought her ‘its’ was referring

    to KDE, not the GUI. My mistake.

    And you both are right, there is too much unused buttons,

    and menu items and whatnot that are an annoyance to most

    people, while only being utilized by a small amount of

    folks.

    Which kinda brings back my original point… it’s actualy

    fairly easy to get kde to look more like gnome, on a UI

    level – but very dificult at this point in gnome’s life

    cycle to get those features that make kde so advanced and

    impressive.

    nice nice, very nice.
28. 2003-12-10 12:42 am

    Anonymous

    On the top of my wish list:

    Give me back the rounded corners! Please!!

    Nautilus authentication is a must-have. And I wish the nautilus-cd-burner would be improved to be able to burn multi-session CD’s, and all that stuff.

    Victor.
29. 2003-12-10 12:50 am

    Anonymous

    bit hard to distinguish between a linux-distro (in my case, fc1) and gnome as such, but anyways:

    1.(by a wide margin) being able to stream content from windows-pcs (mp3, divx etc.) just as easy i can with when booted into my windows xp. smb-integration doesn’t get better, it even gets worse (yes, i know about linneighbourhood)!

    2. a fully functional wmp-equivalent (_no_, xine, totem and mplayer aren’t up to the task!). but it seems that helixplayer will take care of that (a shame that the open-source-developers seem not to be able to deliver a complete solution since years).

    3. cleaning-up and consolidation of configuration-menues (much too shattered)

    4. fasterloading apps

    5. the nice svg-themes installed by default (as well as reg. fedora, a more elegant bluecurve!)

    6. “align after type” for desktop. also, the font-size of the desktop-icons seems to be bigger than the ones within nautilus

    7. being able to choose icons of different themes for all instances of the same filetype (folders, .pdf. .doc etc.)

    8. better printing (especially in color), but this is likely up to the printer-vendors

    that are my major points…i also like the ideas of the gnome bounty-hunt-in general, more integration of all kind!
30. 2003-12-10 12:54 am

    Anonymous

    “I think a Gnome Dialer for modems is really missing.”

    Actually, there is a simple dialer for Gnome that comes in the form of an applet called “Modem Lights” I use it all the time to dial in to my ISP.
31. 2003-12-10 12:58 am

    Anonymous

    Eugenia, the file selector that you show there its not the one that is being developed in the new GTK version.

    That, AFAIK, was an older proposal… but I saw recently(cant remember where, sorry ) a screenshot of the gtk file selector and it is a LOT different.

    Looks like the anjuta 1.2.0 file selector. I’ll try to find a link to it..
32. 2003-12-10 1:00 am

    Anonymous

    No, the fileselector that is there is the current one. The one you are reffering to is a third party GTK+ hack that is not part of the codeline.
33. 2003-12-10 1:03 am

    Anonymous

    forgot:

    – automount and -unmount of removable media, like cds, floppys, usb-sticks with a rep. symbol popping-up on desktop

    – combining the small volume-fader and the big volume-menue, means “one click on icon = main volume – doubleclick = big volume menue
34. 2003-12-10 1:07 am

    Anonymous

    Can I turn off the animation when minimizing a window in GNOME? This is GNOME 2.2 that comes with RH9.

    I have been looking for a way to do this for a long time.

    Thanks !
35. 2003-12-10 1:08 am

    Anonymous

    I totally agree with you about the lack of dev tools. There will be mon and C# and GTK# and pygnome and gtkmm blah, blah, but no integrated, easy to get setup solution to actually create applications.

    Why didn’t Borland use GTK+, etc in Kylix?
36. 2003-12-10 1:19 am

    Anonymous

    I think when people talk about bloat and KDE, they’re talking about a general problem that plagues any free software desktop. Though KDE seems to be more prone to do so. It’s called “reinventing the wheel”. The KDE people frequently seem to feel it necessary to have a ‘K’ version of a game. Even though the only difference are the menu dialogs many times. Many games already had a gnome version, etc. But instead of trying to come up with a standard set of applications that could be maintained easier, they instead decide to maintain their own ‘K’ version all in the name of “it uses Qt, therefore it must be cool!”.

    Seriously. More and more people are wanting their favorite applications to integrate tightly with both desktops, but at the moment that’s near impossible. What’s a developer to do who has created a popular program only to discover that half his users are Gnome users and half his users KDE users? He himself is probably a Gnome user as well and as such probably doesn’t want to have to maintain a KDE version, but at the same time he understands people’s desire to have a ‘K’ version, but believes probably like I do that it’s silly to maintain two seperate versions of the same thing that only differ in their GUI toolkit esentially.

    What’s a developer to do?
37. 2003-12-10 1:19 am

    Anonymous

    When I use Nautilus I am afraid it may overwrite something or crash while I am doing a large file(s) transfer.

    My main problem with the way copy and paste works is the following scenario.

    —

    If I am copying/moving a folder from one location to another and the transfer craps out. I now have two folders with the same name the original that still contains some folders and files, and the new one that has the files and folders that were successfully copied. I click on the original folder and do cut and paste it to where the new folder is.

    Instead of preserving the data that was already copied it overwrites it!!!!

    I have lost so much data because of this one thing, I don’t think Konqueror does this, and I know that this does not happen in XP.

    I now pretty much use an xterm or konqueror for such an operation.

    The other thing is when copying to a folder with nautilus I have to refresh before I can paste.

    Both things I have mentioned about Nautilus are reproducable.

    Also I don’t want Nautilus drawing my desktop. If I disable it with GCONF editor, then Nautilus takes longer to load. I can’t win.

    After all these complaints I still love GNOME more than other environments or WM, weird.

    Also I think kwin is faster than metacity and that is why we sometimes get those crappy redraws.
38. 2003-12-10 1:20 am

    Anonymous

    Yep, a good installer just for the apps that can or should come with Gnome (or even KDE).

    A place where you can not only choose what you want, but where it will be installed and how it will be inserted on menu and/or desktop with an option to uninstall.

    Of course, it must has some kind of dependence checking.

    This can save us of the current options: “almost everything” or “vanilla broken”.
39. 2003-12-10 1:23 am

    Anonymous

    1. yes, a GOOD gnome ppp dialer is really needed.. a GOOD equivalent of kppp has been missing for what? 5 years? Gnome-ppp was getting there in Gnome 1.4, but it still hasn’t been ported to gtk2. =(

    2. a gtk port of plastik, hell even make it the default theme with a few tweaks. Plastik not only looks modern, but is quite usable. Plastik has a chance to become KDE’s default (hopefully!) in KDE 3.3, so maybe we’ll see both desktops have the same theme!

    3. better integration architecturally – one thing that KDE excells at is that nearly all of it’s components are highly integrated in terms of code.

    4. make nautilus fully spatial or not spatial at all (keep it as it is). Don’t have seperate modes for each. The classic MacOS finder was great, so I hope they stick with #1.

    5. share icon themes between GNOME and KDE.. They use the same icon theme format even, but they haven’t standardized the names of icons!

    GNOME 2.4 is definatly kickass, but upon checking out the new kde 3.2 beta, I yearn for a desktop with KDE’s features and architecture and GNOME’s simplicity and feel. I think that’s definatly possible with further development of GNOME, or general polishing of KDE. Overall, I think KDE 3.3 (or 4.0) and GNOME 2.8 (or 3.0) are probably going to be more alike than GNOME 2.4 and KDE 3.1 are.
40. 2003-12-10 1:25 am

    Anonymous

    I think there is no way to turn off the minimizing animation in Metacity except patching a source file. You can compile from a tarball or source RPM. Edit src/window.c and comment out or delete this:

    /* Draw a nice cool animation */

    meta_effects_draw_box_animation (window->screen,

    &window_rect,

    &icon_rect,

    META_MINIMIZE_ANIMATION_LENGTH,

    META_BOX_ANIM_SCALE);

    I do the same thing to get rid of the beep in GDM. It’s too bad the developers can’t give us a simple preference to disable annoyances like these.
41. 2003-12-10 1:25 am

    Anonymous

    Great post Anony, thanks. Your last paragraph hit the nail on the head.
42. 2003-12-10 1:35 am

    Anonymous

    My two wishes.

    1). That more people contribute to make the GNOME experience better. You see, it’s open source for a reason.

    2). Ximian, RH, SUN, IBM, Novell, SGI, HP and community work together to create a kick-a$$ development toolkit based on GTK+. No, not mono!!! It should be Unix-based and have no relationship to M$, Apple or other Proprietary related formats.

    But man can dream, can’t he? There’s are reason there are called wishes.
43. 2003-12-10 1:47 am

    Anonymous

    Eliminate the programs menu, replace it with an “Applications” folder.

    Better icons (less fisher price looking).

    Expose
44. 2003-12-10 1:58 am

    Anonymous

    Eliminate the programs menu, replace it with an “Applications” folder.

    You can do that. Just remove the Applications menu from the panel (you can do that with Gnome 2.4), and create a link on your desktop to the “applications:///” uri on Nautilus.

    Victor.
45. 2003-12-10 2:09 am

    Anonymous

    I hope gThumb supercedes EOG too.
46. 2003-12-10 2:34 am

    Anonymous

    I just want a good cd burner software.
47. 2003-12-10 2:40 am

    Anonymous

    The “reinvent the wheel” argument is a bit lame, given that GNOME was started as a project to reinvent the wheel. Still, its a good thing that the KDE developers reinvent user-visible components:

    1) The KDE versions are often better in many ways. How many HTML renderers does GNOME have? KDE has one, because KHTML was designed from the beginning to be lightweight and easily pluggable. How stable is gstreamer right now? KDE has had a stable media framework (aRts) for awhile know, and the heavily componentized architecture meant that video support was added easily through aRts. How many GNOME apps use components? Almost all KDE apps are componentized, because the KDE component architecture is so easy and lightweight. Why did KDE roll their own configuration (KConfig) and integrated menubar/toolbar (KAction) system? Because gconf didn’t exist, and GNOME still has nothing comparable to KDE’s fully-configurable toolbars. Why did KDE roll its own MDI mechanism? So all the major KDE development apps (Quanta, KDevelop, Kate) could use it. Why did the roll their own I/O mechanism? So all KDE apps could transparently access remote resources over a huge range of protocols. How come Abiword, which is part of GNOME Office, doesn’t appear to use GNOME-VFS? And I still think Qt is a better toolkit in most respects (except maybe for internationalization and accessibility) than GTK+.

    2) The KDE versions integrate better with KDE. Why would a KDE user want to use an app that doesn’t respond to DCOP calls? Or embed itself in Konqueror? Or transparently support centralized configuration mechanisms (hotkeys, etc). Why would a KDE user want to use an app that didn’t automatically use the system-wide wallet manager? Or the integrated KDE spellchecker? Or the advanced features of the Klipboard?

    3) The KDE versions have a nice, integrated, KDE-style API. For developers, KDE is a complete application framework, like .NET or Java.

    Its a cost/benefit thing. If the benefits are greater than the costs, a KDE version will get built. If they are not, then it won’t. That’s why programs like Konqueror, Kontact, JuK, etc, were built from the ground up; why non-user-visible libraries like libxml are used as-is; and why specialized programs like the Gimp don’t get KDE versions at all.

    Look, I’m not trying to begrudge GNOME. GNOME has its own development style, its own developer community, and its own user community. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t begrudge KDE’s right to have the same.
48. 2003-12-10 2:48 am

    Anonymous

    …also, the font-size of the desktop-icons seems to be bigger than the ones within nautilus…

    Look in font preferences. The desktop font is set larger than the file browser [application] font by default in rh9 and fc1.
49. 2003-12-10 2:50 am

    Anonymous

    Eugena, sometimes you’ll write things that make so much sense, and sometimes you’ll write things that completely blow my mind. This article has a healthy mix of both. Here goes…

    Nautilus scripts/addons: Couldn’t agree more that these need to be exploited. This could be extremely powerful, and this is something that no other file manager has, to my knowledge. However, I couldn’t agree less with your ideas about a generic context menu. Think about it this way…when you right-click on a tarball, what’s the most likely thing you’ll want to do with it? If you wanted to open it, you would have double-clicked. No, you probably want to extract it. I’d go so far as to say this is the most common action performed on tarballs on my machine. Why would I possibly want to move this action from the top level? Submenus in the context menu annoy the crap out of me. They’re ugly as sin and awkward to use. I do NOT want to be running through a list of “add to music library” or “open with gthumb” to find my extract option. The same thing applies to music (being enqueued in rhythmbox), photos (open with EOG/Gthumb/whatever) and all sorts of other filetypes on which you invoke one common action.

    A new modern theme: Wasn’t this supposed to have happened by now? Gnome is clearly in dire need of this.

    Themeing engine: I think you might be a little mixed up about how Gnome’s “themeing engine” works. Things like the obscure for-Eugenia-only feature of smoothing the corners of the buttons are handled by each individual theme engine. You would have to get every one of them to implement this. I have no idea what you’re talking about with “the height of the theme”.

    File selector: This irks me. If you’re going to publish a journalistic piece on a well-reputed websight with relatively high traffic, PLEASE take the time to do a little research! The gui shown in these screenshots is a temporary UI to test features. When people write the code for things like the implementation of custom widgets, they need a way to test it don’t they? This is a design by engineers, for engineers and is not intended to be the final product. The only reason you’re seeing it at all is because the development is open. This is not the final file selector. AFAIK it’s being designed as I write this. I mean seriously, it has a lone checkbox at the bottom that says “Frobnicate the file”! Please do some reading before you publish this kind of stuff. It damages not only the reputation of yourself and OSNews, but the reputation of Gnome itself. As far as usability goes, it gives you the option to set your own bookmarks and define custom widgets. That’s pretty good. That’s basically a scaled-down nautilus right there. What more do you want?

    Development tools: I agree that Gnome is in need of a really good IDE. Anjuta’s cool, and it has some neat features, but it’s C/C++ only, and the pace of development is agonizing (I believe it’s one guy). Scaffolding looked really promising, but appears to have been abandoned. An IDE that could let me choose whether I want to write in C, C++, C#, Java, Python, or Perl (Gnome projects AND non-Gnome projects for all said languages) would be most appreciated. Until that time, it’s all about gVim. I would probably vote against the inclusion of Eclipse. It’s very Java-centric, a massive beast of a memory hog, and terribly cluttered. While it’s quite powerful for Java development, it leaves quite a bit to be desired when it comes to C++.

    Faster GTK: Actually I had a friend over the other day who commented with a disapproving frown “I’m seeing a lot of lag in your widget rendering.” He’s a hardcore windows-advocate, and I had to give him this one. I’m not sure whether it’s GTK, X, the kernel, or a little of all, but it’s true that GTK2 is noticably slow.

    Easier to use API: What the hell. You didn’t say what’s wrong with it! I don’t know what’s wrong with it. Have you tried any of the bindings? GTKmm is pretty straightforward, pyGTK is a dream, as is GTK#. I’ve not yet tried GTK-Perl (perl seems so poorly suited for such a thing), so I can’t comment there.

    Glade: Might I ask what’s wrong with it (besides it being “junk”)? I use Glade2 all the time and I have no qualms.

    Copy/Paste: This is getting to be embarrassing. Someone has to do this before the next release or I’m switching desktops.

    Burner app: I agree that Gnome needs one, but this is another area where you should really do more research before you open your mouth. Coaster is not abandoned. The coaster guy has been working on libburn for a year now, and it’s getting quite functional. Coaster is really no more than a gui that exposes libburn’s functionality. The dropline guy is writing another frontend to libburn. This is exactly the same thing that we’re hoping to have happen with gaim once the core/ui split is complete.

    Gnome Office: Gnome office (unlike koffice, which is crapola) shows real promise. What’s needed now is integration with the Gnome desktop left right and center.
50. 2003-12-10 2:53 am

    Anonymous

    MS does it with Word. You type your email in a stripped-down Word and send as normal. If we could do this with Abi it would really rock, especially since the Evo 1.4 editor leaves a lot to be desired.
51. 2003-12-10 3:05 am

    Anonymous

    It has already been done.

    AbiWord provides a bonobofied version of itself (if you compile it) and with that – evolution can use it.

    At least the 1.4 could.

    http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~msevior/abiword/evolution-abi.png

    This is for display only though – i think.
52. 2003-12-10 3:08 am

    Anonymous

    Ok… This is my biggest pet peeve. I want to be able to make a hotkey do any command I want. The predefined list is fine, but I would like to be able to do something like.

    WinKey+E = Execute (evolution)

    Furthermore, it should be made so you can do more fancy things like

    Win+p = Execute (xterm -e irssi-text -c irc.freenode.net)

    or something similar. Fluxbox allows you to do anything and it’s the one reason I still use Sawfish if I’m using gnome.
53. 2003-12-10 3:10 am

    Anonymous

    I ma still using redhat 8 with ximian desktop, and this is what i use.

    1) Use the network configuration (neat i think) to set up a dialup connection. The connections will usually be ppp0, ppp1 etc.

    2)Add the modem lights applet. In preferences/General type this as ur connect command textbox,

    /sbin/ifup ppp0

    disconnect command

    /sbin/ifdown ppp0

    Now if u want to connect/disconnect, just press the button on the applet. It will turn yellow while dialing and then green on connection/red when disconnected also gives modem connection speed etc.

    Of course the problem is changing telephone no.s . But my ISP has a roaming number , so it doesn’t really bother me.

    Alternatively, u could create seperate connections for different no.s and then change the pppx option appropriately.

    Also make sure that in

    Preferences/Advanced

    Modem lock file :/var/lock/LCK..ttyS0

    (could differ depending on which port ur modem is connected)

    Check Verify owner of lock file as true and give the lock file option as ppp0 (usually the default).

    Hope this helps.

    And of course the same commands can be used from the command line as well. Modem lights will appropriately change colour.

    If the anyone was really bothered about usability they could have just set it up by default and added the applet to the panel, once u set up ur connection.
54. 2003-12-10 3:10 am

    Anonymous

    It would also be nice to see an app like “ACDSee” or “irfanview” for windows within gnome. KDE has kuickshow which is my favorite linux app so far for this, but gtksee seems to get the job done as well, it could just be updated and included in gnome.
55. 2003-12-10 3:11 am

    Anonymous

    It wouldn’t take too much work to create a gnome dialer using wvdial, libwvstreams gtk event bindings and gtkmm to create a gnome ppp dialer that is quite magical. See http://open.nit.ca/WvDial or http://open.nit.ca/WvStreams for information on wvdial and wvstreams.
56. 2003-12-10 3:19 am

    Anonymous

    What Gnome needs is to be a lot more like KDE, and what KDE needs is to be a lot more like Gnome.

    Gnome wins on design and beauty, while KDE have the functionality that most users need. The Gnome default theeme is much more graphically distinct than the default KDE theame. Icons in Gnome are more distinct in shape, this makes them much faster to identify etc. Gnome have better feedback for e.g drag & drop, but KDE is more network transparant. Just look at the KDE file dialog, and compare it to the one in Gnome. Even the new beta 2.6 version is far behind that of KDE. Look at the search functioality in Nautilus compared to that in KDE/konqueror. In KDE you can not only find files based on their names, but also according to their contents. You can even ask for image that looks similar to certain given image.

    I agree with Eugenia that there is a strong need to coordinate HIGs for the free desktop. Certain things should be very similar regardless of what platform you use. I’m thinking of file/print dialogs, the ordering of “Yes”, “No” “cancel” buttons. I don’t care if is the Gnoem way, the KDE way or some brand new standard. As long as both Gnome and KDE have a shortage of good applications written for each environment we need to make it possible to create consisten looking and acting desktops from a mix of applications.
57. 2003-12-10 3:30 am

    Anonymous

    … all the stuff Eugenia said, plus …

    Non-regular shaped theme support in Metacity like I used to have in Sawfish on Gnome 1.4! At the moment it’s:

    “how would you like your window border shaped sir? Plain, or plain with a slight rounding of the edges?!!?”

    And before anyone says it, I can’t be ar*ed to install Sawfish even though it apparently works.

    Great review BTW
58. 2003-12-10 3:32 am

    Anonymous

    “the ordering of Yes, No, Cancel buttons. I don’t care if it is the Gnome way, the KDE way, or some brand new standard.”

    As for Yes/No buttons, there is pretty much two ways to do it. Yes/No or No/Yes. If you find out another one, I vote for that!
59. 2003-12-10 3:41 am

    Anonymous

    so much for the kde vs gnome stuff.

    i use kde because i simply like it.

    konqueror the best file manager to date.

    when it comes to apps, usability/functionality first.

    the idea of kde + qt apps / gnome + gtk apps is simply pathetic
60. 2003-12-10 4:06 am

    Anonymous

    “The “reinvent the wheel” argument is a bit lame, given that GNOME was started as a project to reinvent the wheel. Still, its a good thing that the KDE developers reinvent user-visible components:

    1) The KDE versions are often better in many ways. How many HTML renderers does GNOME have? KDE has one, because KHTML was designed from the beginning to be lightweight and easily pluggable. How stable is gstreamer right now? KDE has had a stable media framework (aRts) for awhile know, and the heavily componentized architecture meant that video support was added easily through aRts. How many GNOME apps use components? Almost all KDE apps are componentized, because the KDE component architecture is so easy and lightweight. Why did KDE roll their own configuration (KConfig) and integrated menubar/toolbar (KAction) system? Because gconf didn’t exist, and GNOME still has nothing comparable to KDE’s fully-configurable toolbars. Why did KDE roll its own MDI mechanism? So all the major KDE development apps (Quanta, KDevelop, Kate) could use it. Why did the roll their own I/O mechanism? So all KDE apps could transparently access remote resources over a huge range of protocols. How come Abiword, which is part of GNOME Office, doesn’t appear to use GNOME-VFS? And I still think Qt is a better toolkit in most respects (except maybe for internationalization and accessibility) than GTK+.

    2) The KDE versions integrate better with KDE. Why would a KDE user want to use an app that doesn’t respond to DCOP calls? Or embed itself in Konqueror? Or transparently support centralized configuration mechanisms (hotkeys, etc). Why would a KDE user want to use an app that didn’t automatically use the system-wide wallet manager? Or the integrated KDE spellchecker? Or the advanced features of the Klipboard?

    3) The KDE versions have a nice, integrated, KDE-style API. For developers, KDE is a complete application framework, like .NET or Java.

    Its a cost/benefit thing. If the benefits are greater than the costs, a KDE version will get built. If they are not, then it won’t. That’s why programs like Konqueror, Kontact, JuK, etc, were built from the ground up; why non-user-visible libraries like libxml are used as-is; and why specialized programs like the Gimp don’t get KDE versions at all.

    Look, I’m not trying to begrudge GNOME. GNOME has its own development style, its own developer community, and its own user community. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t begrudge KDE’s right to have the same.”

    That’s true, there are important benefits to having a KDE version of an application, like the ones you mentioned and also if the GNOME version dies, the KDE version might still live.

    However, the REAL solution is to make the desktops adopt a comon standard so pretty much the same benefits will be available regardless of what desktop it was intented for. I am glad to see that this is realized by more and more people and freedesktop.org is the first step in making this a reality. Finally people are realizing that the best way for Linux to get on the average user’s desktop is not by more intense competition, rather more cooperation, a more unified seamless platform. This base platform will of course have variations like KDE and GNOME< but they should essentially use the same base technology.

    Hopefully with DBUS, the freedesktop.org standard slated for inclusion in KDE 4.0, we will see a Linux desktop that is seamless, easier to use, interoperable and easy to develop for. I only hope GNOME will go forward with this too, it is a lot work to change to DBUS, more so than for KDE, but GNOME’s COBRA really sucks anyway, unless it changed a lot since 2.2 when I last used it to build a minesweepers program, which I also created in Qt (Qt 3.1 is really MUCH easier).

    Right now KDE has a great architecture, but several problems with the UI, however the backend is great and KDE’s problems are really a lot easier to fix. Unfortunately there are powerful forces that GNOME has that KDE does not yet have. GNOME has FAR more paid developers, corporate backing from SUN< IBM< Novell etc. KDE doesn’t really. I really hope this will change, because I believe one without the other won’t get very far.

    “As for Yes/No buttons, there is pretty much two ways to do it. Yes/No or No/Yes. If you find out another one, I vote for that!”

    ROFL I hope all UI designer will just make it Yes/No, from my experience with others, users rarely read the dialogs anyway =p Just make sure that Yes is usually the best option.
61. 2003-12-10 4:21 am

    Anonymous

    “when it comes to apps, usability/functionality first. ”

    You’d be surprised how many people feel otherwise.

    There are some valid reasons for trying to keep to one kind of app – memory constraints, for example. On a desktop with 512mb-1gb RAM, this seems silly, but on a 96mb laptop, it’s a real concern.

    Perhaps I’m just slow, but a cursory examination of k3b doesn’t reveal any particularly amazing features beyond an unusually good sense of user friendliness. gToaster seems roughly equivalent, although I admit, it needs more work.

    I was surprised that Eugenia didn’t bring up Dashboard, which is making some relatively fast progress now that the first release approaches. The functionality is amazing at this point – it works extremely well with Epiphany and Gaim, as well as XChat.

    -Erwos
62. 2003-12-10 4:25 am

    Anonymous

    Another point that bug me with GNOME is the permanent change of stuff. KDE does indeed take better care of this. In GNOME once something becomes halfway usable and stable developers trash the stuff and start over with huge changes in the GUI and in the behaviour of the program. A good example is Evolution here. People got used to Evolution 1.x, they had Addressbook, Mail, Tasks, Calendar and things like this selected from the left Tree and now with the ‘entourage’ look people now need to press extra buttons on the bottom only to get to another place of the program. This is not just happening with Evolution but it’s one of the bigger examples. E.g. Nautilus. The Hierarchic way was quite ok the only thing it needed was more stabilisation, fixes of gnome-vfs (ftp, samba and so on). Make all the things like ‘all-applications:// applications:// http:// ftp:// start-here:// burn:// fonts:// <anothersecret>://’ shown somewhere or in a manual so people do not need to play trivia with them. But no, the entire concept of Nautilus (once it got halfway usable and a bit stable) was trashed over for something complete different.

    I know software development is a permanent process. But the process doesn’t mean that you must trash entire concepts over for different things. What we need are stable applications, applications that keep their look over a longer period. Once a program becomes stable the developer could head over to other things where real work is required and fix the stuff there. But this permanent changes of things before it even gets stable or usable is really annoying and will never end. End as in ‘freeze’ stay that way. New stuff should be added or old things altered, but please in a way that doesn’t annoy people.

    Most of the time it’s the ‘mood’ of the developer that makes such changes. You know the sentence ‘the one who supplies the code leads the programs direction’ or ‘the maintainer decides’ … The argument may be valid in a 10 people project but GNOME as well as KDE became too important for more than just 10 people thus it requires well thought things and more diplomatic way of how changes are being dealt with.

    See KDE for example, a lot of stuff stayed the way it was since KDE 2.0 they smoothly changed Icons and some Themes, added new features and cleaned up, more stabilisation and better integration. Changes are being made but the bottom layer of the apps still behave the same. While Konqueror got new features and new icons it still acts, behaves as it was since 2.0 they haven’t touched or trashed the entire concept to go for yet another way.
63. 2003-12-10 4:29 am

    Anonymous

    Well, you can have:

    Yes No (KDE I guess?)

    and

    No Yes (Gnome)

    as you have identified, but also:

    Yes

    No

    and

    No

    Yes
64. 2003-12-10 4:48 am

    Anonymous

    I just think there are some irreconcilable differences. The option is to either use the GNOME technology, or the KDE technology. Standards are nice to a point, but often, standards that aren’t concieved as a result of an implementation (TCP/IP, POSIX), and are instead made by committee (CORBA), often suck hard. Integrating technology wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the GNOME developers were willing to budge a bit more (they seem rather disinclined to include anything with C++). However, as it is, it seems to me that there is a strong possibility that the GNOME developers, for various reasons including corporate clout and the lowest-common-denominator status of C, have the possibility of pushing technologies at KDE, but not adopting technologies from KDE. That leaves KDE using foreign APIs and tons of wrappers. We’re already starting to see this with D-BUS — its a C library that the KDE developers need to write Qt wrappers for.

    Frankly, I’m not really interested in GNOME technology. They’ve made some huge advances in usability and user interface polish, but the guts really aren’t very interesting. Its a nice evolution over classic APIs, but its not competitive with .NET or Cocoa. That’s why the GNOME folks need Mono so badly. If the direction of technology flow in a standardized system is from GNOME -> KDE, instead of vice versa, KDE users would be stuck with a less capable platform.
65. 2003-12-10 4:52 am

    Anonymous

    In the same fashion as fobricate, how about Aye {yes} or Nay {no}?
66. 2003-12-10 5:14 am

    Anonymous

    “However, as it is, it seems to me that there is a strong possibility that the GNOME developers, for various reasons including corporate clout and the lowest-common-denominator status of C, have the possibility of pushing technologies at KDE, but not adopting technologies from KDE. That leaves KDE using foreign APIs and tons of wrappers. We’re already starting to see this with D-BUS — its a C library that the KDE developers need to write Qt wrappers for. ”

    This is true, but not the part about D-BUS. D-BUS first of all is NOT a GNOME technology, rather a freedesktop.org one. D-BUS also has C++ bindings for it, not just C. The main problems with it are regarding secuirity, everything else is already pretty much where it needs to be. You should also keep in mind that D-BUS is based on the powerful and flexible DCOP KDE technology. This makes it significantly easier for KDE to adopt this than GNOME and as I mentioned it yields many advantages for both desktops and other desktops since D-BUS is desktop agnostic, Havoc even said that adopting D-BUS is even more difficult for the GNOMErs. So it is actually more KDE technology than GNOME and also more likely to be adopted first by KDE than GNOME.
67. 2003-12-10 5:23 am

    Anonymous

    “Another point that bug me with GNOME is the permanent change of stuff. … In GNOME once something becomes halfway usable and stable developers trash the stuff and start over with huge changes in the GUI and in the behaviour of the program. A good example is Evolution here. … Nautilus.”

    8< … etc

    I would tend to agree with you in most cases but I think both of the examples you mention were more fundamental changes in policy and understanding of the whole Gnome project – an Epiphany if you will!

    I am completely in favour of the move to a spatial Nautilus. The reasoning behind it is sound and the justification of decisions seems to have been thoroughly and satisfactorily explained. Additionally, the ArsTechnica article which appears to have been a contributor to the move was truly inspirational. If Gnome can incorporate everything that article was proposing (written for the Mac OSX finder) then there will be a lot of happy Gnome users out there.

    Similarly with Evolution, Ximian have made a move to separate the various components which I consider to be a well-considered move. This will facilitate its (long overdue IMHO) inclusion in the main Gnome release, will make it launch faster, and will enable various backends to be used by other apps such as the Gaim/contacts and clock applet/calendar work currently being done as part of the Gnome bounties.

    What I don’t agree with is the sudden changes in applications. Galeon’s in, Galeon’s out, GGV’s in, GGV’s out etc., etc. I understand the reasoning with many of the decisions made in the past and things seem to have stabilised a bit in more recent releases so it may just have been part of the 1.x -> 2.x transition but product stability is key if major consumer desktop distributions are to be based on the Gnome DE.

    Perhaps they should create stable Gnome code-forks (read on before speaking up on this one!) of all the apps (eg: Gnome-browser instead of Epiphany/Galeon/whatever etc.). These would ideally just be mirrors of the underlying applications unless the app developers decide to change track for some reason. Taking the example of the Galeon split, the “Gnome-browser” fork of galeon could have been developed separately from the point of the split and slowly transitioned to the Epiphany codebase rather than what happened where a perfectly good and stable browser was ripped out and replaced by a semi-functional early release which has only recently arrived at a similar level of quality.

    I’m sure there are many other ways to achieve a similar result but something more is needed than the current attitude of “if you don’t meet our requirements we’ll rip your app out and replace it with something which is either completely different or alpha quality”. I can’t imagine Sun or Novell being too pleased with that kind of dramatic change happening once their software is on millions of corporate and consumer desktops around the world!
68. 2003-12-10 5:28 am

    Anonymous

    I agree with what you said about the new GtkFileSelector. It is very poorly designed and it needs to be rethought. We are better off with the current one.

    Later on in the article when you stated “Glade is junk, end of story”, I stopped reading. Glade is IMHO the most elegant app for designing user interfaces on OSS desktops. It generates pure C, not the “meta object” bloat that QT Designer churns out. Add to this the fact that you have access to all GTK 2.x and GNOME 2.x widgets. Not to mention that Glade conforms to GNOME’s HIG so it is impeccably easy to use. Have you ever used Glade for any length of time? I doubt you know C very well either.

    When or if you come to the conclusion any product is “junk”, never voice it aloud or on a website. Voice your individual concearns in a diplomatic way. If glade truly is “junk”, do you really think so many people would use it?
69. 2003-12-10 5:42 am

    Anonymous

    – Proper url-wrapping from terminal to clipboard/open URL. I read e-mail in mutt, and still use terminal-based IRC clients — this is a feature I like, but it doesn’t work very well. When there’s a URL that wraps, it doesn’t open properly, nor does it copy properly.

    – Kitchen sink.
70. 2003-12-10 6:01 am

    Anonymous

    Or it could be,

    Ναί η Όχι

    or

    Όχι η Ναί

    LOL!!
71. 2003-12-10 6:02 am

    Anonymous

    Damn that was meant to be in Greek.

    Nai or Oxi

    Oxi or Nai

    :b

    Greek works in the phorums.
72. 2003-12-10 6:03 am

    Anonymous

    What about

    NO: 0

    Yes: 1
73. 2003-12-10 6:48 am

    Anonymous

    I belive the most promising gnome cd-burning application is ECLiPt Roaster, the stable version still uses the old GTK, but check out the development version too, it rocks.

    http://freshmeat.net/projects/ecliptroaster/
74. 2003-12-10 6:52 am

    Anonymous

    “Glade is IMHO the most elegant app for designing user interfaces on OSS desktops. It generates pure C, not the “meta object” bloat that QT Designer churns out. Add to this the fact that you have access to all GTK 2.x and GNOME 2.x widgets. Not to mention that Glade conforms to GNOME’s HIG so it is impeccably easy to use. Have you ever used Glade for any length of time? I doubt you know C very well either. ”

    I’m sorry, but I’ve spent about a week with Glade and if anything it isn’t easy to use and it’s documentation isn’t all that great either. I don’t care that it complies with GNome’s HIG, maybe when I tried it it didn’t, last try was 4 months ago but it is way too cluttered and the overall feel does not seem integrated like Qt Designer’s. I am also suprised that you call the files that Qt provides “meta object bloat”. They actually reduce bloat, are easier to use and maintain, they are considered a significant advantage by some users. XML is really great for interface files. QtDesigner also provides acess to the KDE and QtWidgets, there is a special KDE tab.

    I hope that you aren’t the same person saying about how glade has a scalable interface and you lay them out instead of painting them. As if this was something special. Qt/KDE have had this since the 1.x days, in fact even before GTK+ existed.

    This may be a feature that would be nice to see on Microsoft development platforms like Visual Basic .NET which STILL does not have a layout manager (scalable interface, one ui design for all monitors and resolutions). At least they are starting to incorporate some Qt-like features in the new MS Visual Studio.

    Anyway the GLADE vs QtDesigner issue is a dead one, GLADE really doesen’t even stand comparrison and QtDesigner is a much more powerful tool.
75. 2003-12-10 7:05 am

    Anonymous

    concerning the video editing apps for gnome, kino has been fully ported to gtk2 (in CVS, but works)

    only downside : they won’t use GStreamer in its current state

    —

    for the burning tools, you are right, we need a good one for gnome. and staying away from cdrecord front-end crap.

    burning tools need to use and extend libburn (see freedesktop software) so to share the real burning code
76. 2003-12-10 7:24 am

    Anonymous

    Personally, I don’t really have a whishlist for GNOME, because everything that would be specific to GNOME is already beeing worked on or at least considered.

    I’d like to comment on a few things though.

    @Eugenia’s List

    Nautilus Spatial Mode

    I agree that it can be hard to know what exactly a folder is showing without the path. I’m not sure though I’d enjoy it constantly showing the Unix path… Also I think that I’d rather use the navigational window whenever this would really matter (for example when browsing the filesystem or a complex tree, like a source tree). Still it might be nice to have some kind of indicator where I am, maybe the path could be abstracted in some way… like “Desktop > Music > Classical” and “Desktop > Poems > Classical” instead of “/home/daniel/Desktop/Music/Classical” and “/home/daniel/Desktop/Poems/Classical”. I don’t know, just some brainstorming. Nevertheless, I love spatial Nautilus already. It feels just right to me, as if it always had been the plan for it. I also love that the browser interface won’t be gone at all.

    A New Modern Theme

    True, as a Red Hat user it’s easy to forget that Bluecurve isn’t the default. I still enjoy Bluecurve, even after a few years I have always come back to it. I know that you don’t like square widgets, but I have a feeling that this is going to be changed soon. On the Todo List of Red Hat Artwork ( http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/artwork/ ) is “Modify widget style” and I believe that Garrett intends it to look a bit more like the window border buttons (thus rounded). I also hope for a bit of color separation between buttons and background and that the new style will look as clean and professional as the current one. It’s certainly not trivial to make rounded widgets look good (there isn’t a single one besides Aqua and maybe even Luna which I could look at for a longer time without getting sick of it).

    ATM I enjoy Bluecurve Berry and Cream together with the “Simple” border style, which looks very square, but also very slick.

    File Selector

    As others have pointed out, the current one really is just a testbed for the features of the API. It is wrong to say that it would be difficult to change it again. The new API should make that trivial. So if there is anything about the current API you don’t like, then you should speak up. The interface can and will change.

    Nautilus Authentication (local files)

    I couldn’t agree more, I absolutely think that this is one of those rather minor but particulary tricky problems that need to be solved for the home desktop (and for everyone else it would be nice too). In fact, I’d have to correct my statement from above for this one, as this particular feature doesn’t seem to be planned yet.

    Preference Panels, System Integration

    Oh I also agree with that, the Ximian preferences are much more convenient IMO than the preferences menu. It’s not bugging me a lot but this should be reconsidered. I think there was some talk about it once, but not anymore lately.

    Video Editor

    That would be great, but why should Ximian do it. This probably won’t help them making money on the corporate desktop while still consuming lots of ressources. A community project might have better chances. In the meantime, there might be some proprietary solutions once Linux becomes more viable for the home desktop.

    Epiphany

    Marco mentioned a web developer addon once, I believe that’s a great idea, at least better than adding all the little details to the interface that only developers care for or making the compromise of only adding the most useful developer features (I want them all ).

    Images, Cameras, PDAs

    I don’t think gthump should ever replace EoG. If anything, it should supplyment it. EoG is much better IMO for viewing a single image after clicking on it in the filemanager.

    @Charlie

    Mozilla starts up is less than 2 seconds, if that. Epiphany can take up to 5 or 6 seconds yet it is supposed to be native, leaner, and meaner.

    Many of the smaller applications, like the calculator or most of the games, take more than 5 seconds to start when they should be nearly instantaneous.

    There really must be something wrong on your system. Maybe my system is just WAY faster than yours, but then Mozilla couldn’t start in less than two seconds for you.

    I just booted the computer and all the smaller applications like calculator and “most of the games” instead launch nearly instantaneous (less than a second).

    Maybe this is because of something done in Fedora (like prelinking), I don’t know. It was much worse for me with RH9 indeed, but RH9 was probably the slowest distro I have ever used for a longer time. I also noticed that sometimes application load time increases when my system is under heavy load, but that’s probably to be expected.

    @stu

    [/i]What I don’t agree with is the sudden changes in applications. Galeon’s in, Galeon’s out[/i]

    That’s not true, Galeon was never in. The release team is _very_ picky about accepting new modules, especially for the reason you mention. Epiphany is the first official GNOME browser and even this one had a hard time to get accepted at all. With the main issue beeing accessability considerations IIRC.
77. 2003-12-10 7:51 am

    Anonymous

    My vertical option for yes/no buttons was meant to be sensible, though I don’t think it should be used Earlier versions of Macintosh used them in some places (filepickers for example). Using 0 and 1 is just silly.

    The new filepicker is better than the old one. You mightn’t think the interface is all that good, but the reason GTK’s been stuck with the same old interface is because once they’ve changed the API, the interface can change too. I think for example that with the new API, ROX users (for instance) will be able to use a rox dnd savebox-style thing instead of a minifiler.

    As for Glade, if it’s HIG-based, then it must be some special secret HIG I haven’t heard about. ‘Are you sure you want to quit?/Cancel/Quit’? Whatever happened to ‘Do you want to save the changes you made to the project “Foo”? Your changes will be lost if you don’t save them./Don’t save/Cancel/Save’? Glade is about as easy-to-use as a left-handed canopener for a quadraplegic.
78. 2003-12-10 8:07 am

    Anonymous

    Sorry, i don’t quiet get why you would need a ‘more professional clean’ theme, like plastic off KDE. Don’t get me wrong i like plastic, but Ximian’s industrial in my books is nicer, it is clean and in fact looks very similar to plastic (or the other way round) – i actually used plastic so i can get some more ‘unified’ theming for my KDE-Apps on my Gnome-Desktop, having said that I have ditched KDE and its Apps completely now and are using solely Gnome. But really what is wrong with Industrial – it does look more polished and professional than plastic does (the highlights on plastics buttons are not very nice)
79. 2003-12-10 8:10 am

    Anonymous

    It is not easy at all to write a good column, cuz’ I like writing sometimes. Well, this is overall a quite good column. However, If May I have a bit idea on it, it should be avoided to use active sentences such as “I want this” , “I need that” and so on. Unfortunately, GNOME is being developed by community and in GNU, only You want or you need that is not enough and that is very personal flavours. That is my personal idea only. About article, it is agreed up to 80% by me :-). Thanks
80. 2003-12-10 8:33 am

    Anonymous

    Eugenia, have you actually filed feature request bugs on GNOME’s bugzilla for the less adventurous of your suggestions?

    ’cause i’m sure there are a few trivial issues, such as nautilus authentication(isn’t it like using a GUI su when trying to run system config tools from a non root user?), which i’m sure could get dealt with fairly rapidly.
81. 2003-12-10 8:38 am

    Anonymous

    * File manager (Nautilus) :

    – A better list and tree view. Icons are eye candy but often I want to see as much files as possible to navigate/copy/move/find.

    – Good search functions so I can stop running a terminal to launch “locate” or “find” or “grep”

    – Improved speed when viewing a folder with large number of files (try opening a folder with hundred of svg tests file in nautilus..)

    – Better display for files with long name (it really looks bad and take space when nautilus starts a new line only to draw the last “e” of a name..). I think explorer cut long names so they re always drawn on only 2 lines

    * Desktop :

    – Fast switching of users

    – Extend the concept of virtual desktop so we can have different icons & wallpaper on each

    * Text editor (Gedit) :

    – A way to edit files through ssh (or ftp, etc..)

    – I’d like to have gedit warn me when a file is changed by another application

    – A list of favorite files to quickly open logs, todo list file, or current project files

    * Mail :

    – It would be nice to have a mail only app with all the cool features of evolution mail (I don’t need weather, calendar, rss agregation or what else, I thought gnome was aiming for simplicity ?)

    * Web browser (Epiphany) :

    – Autoscroll when clicking with middle button as in IE (or mozilla with some javascript extension)

    – Grouped bookmark a la mozilla, very usefull to open your favorite sites in one click

    * Multimedia :

    – I’d love a small applet to play audio files. Just this. Play. Audio. An unobstructive one with no useless visualization plugins, stupid skins, or database behind, or burning or conversion feature or .. well you get it.

    – For video totem is nice, keep it like this !

    – As other have mentionned an acdsee like tool to see images would be nice. gthumb is not bad though I had some crashes
82. 2003-12-10 8:45 am

    Anonymous

    I think that the PPL from GNOME and KDE should get together and create a theme system that works on both DE, so for example I can create a theme and it will be able to be used on both? Possible? Yes it is, we just need code generators for both, so when it comes to building themes in c/c++ the generator could build sources from XML, for both DE and compile them… Can be hard but will work
83. 2003-12-10 9:04 am

    Anonymous

    Don’t.
84. 2003-12-10 9:10 am

    Anonymous

    With the vast amount of support that Gnome is getting from Sun (500,000 installed desktops in China, a possible 800,000 more in the UK), it now has to be considered the premier Linux desktop. You can pretty much guarantee that most of the things on your wishlist are already being implemented as we speak, and I estimate that within a year from now, it will be far and away the best DE for Linux.
85. 2003-12-10 9:10 am

    Anonymous

    > the ordering of Yes, No, Cancel buttons…

    Actually, there are six ways of ordering Yes, No & Cancel buttons horizontally

    1. Yes, No, Cancel (aka KDEish order)

    2. Yes, Cancel, No

    3. Cancel, Yes, No

    4. Cancel, No, Yes

    5. No, Yes, Cancel

    6. No, Cancel, Yes (aka Gnomish order)
86. 2003-12-10 9:22 am

    Anonymous

    Consider there is 30,000,000 desktops in China and still M$ couldn’t make money there, do you really think JDS will make a dent there ?
87. 2003-12-10 9:28 am

    Anonymous

    I personally don’t agree about the need to make icon size determine by default the window title height.

    If you want to design nifty icons, please drop the antique pixel-based design and begin using SVG icons. These render nicely at any size.

    Pixmap graphics for anything else than 2D games should be treated as obsolete if we actually want to get an open desktop architecture (so that different constructing blocks, configurations and resolutions may be truly interchangeable).
88. 2003-12-10 9:39 am

    Anonymous

    I agree with everything (some of the reasons made me switch to KDE, and am very happy with it), except the part about Glade. It’s mostly the only thing in Gnome that attracts me to develop in it. That and Gtk#.
89. 2003-12-10 9:48 am

    Anonymous

    The ability to force applications to start in their specified workspace, á la Window Maker. An added bonus would be workspace specific icons/launchers.
90. 2003-12-10 10:01 am

    Anonymous

    I use gnome as my main desktop and I don’t have any real gripes exept :

    – I would really like to be able to set the homedir (startdir) in Nautilus (and the file selector), so I don’t have look at all the configuration dirs

    – An easy way to edit icon themes would be nice
91. 2003-12-10 10:08 am

    Anonymous

    I’m not a DE zealot. However, I’ve tried all the releases of GNOME up to 2.4 and each time, I find it wanting. The problems are numerous and I’m not going to go into them here. The point is, I believe the majority of Linux users do not use GNOME, so their wishlist is basically for GNOME apps to work more seamlessly with their DE of choice (usually KDE.)

    The freedesktop folks are sorting out the nitty gritty stuff like drag and drop, and that is basically not a problem, or won’t be soon. A bigger problem is in theming and fonts. How can I make my GTK apps look like my Qt apps? The don’t have to look identical, but if I set my default fonts, then I need *all* my apps to follow those defaults. I don’t know if a unified theme manager is feasible, but it is needed. GNOME theming is a joke, as it is. Why am i unable to change colour schemes without having to install a whole new theme? I’ve never yet found a GNOME theme that looks good.
92. 2003-12-10 10:11 am

    Anonymous

    There is no point talking about “Yes, No, Cancel” ordering in GNOME, because our goal is to *not use* these non-specific terms. Read the HIG – dialogue box buttons need to describe what you’re going to do, not answer a question. Once you grok that, you’ll grok the rationale behind the ordering.
93. 2003-12-10 10:15 am

    Anonymous

    You should reassess your comment that “the majority of Linux users do not use GNOME”, considering the number of massively large scale deployments we’ve seen in Brazil, Spain, China, and more on the way. 🙂

    The majority of Linux desktop users do not post to OSNews. 🙂
94. 2003-12-10 10:16 am

    Anonymous

    I just hope the gnome team don’t ever remove the ablity to tab complete filenames from within the gtk file selector dialog, that feature alone makes up for the ugliness of the beast.
95. 2003-12-10 10:28 am

    Anonymous

    >> Give me back the rounded corners! Please!!

    Easy one. Just make the right panel-backbround with gnome.

    Here is a little instruction (in German):

    http://www.osnanet.de/c.schroeder/linux/gnome.html

    Or download a panel-background;

    http://www.osnanet.de/c.schroeder/download/panel.png

    Screenshot:

    http://www.osnanet.de/c.schroeder/linux/gnome2-shozt.png
96. 2003-12-10 10:53 am

    Anonymous

    jfb-thanks!
97. 2003-12-10 11:06 am

    Anonymous

    “GnomeMeeting is not a casual chat application and primarily is a PC-2-Phone application following its maintainers”

    I’m the main maintainer and I can tell it is completely wrong.

    Reaction here :

    http://mail.gnome.org/archives//gnomemeeting-list/2003-December/msg…

    Don’t take it bad, that’s just wrong, and I needed to clarify things so that people do not have bad info in mind.
98. 2003-12-10 11:11 am

    Anonymous

    1. _Good_ fonts in gnome-terminal. These days, I have to

    use either rxvt or xterm while running Gnome.

    I do really miss gnome-terminal that was available in Gnome

    1.x. (IMO, the image viewer in G1.4 was also better than

    the current one).

    2. In Alt+F2, let arrow keys work as in bash (and KDE’s

    Alt+F2), not vice versa.

    3. _Much more_ evident way to take icons away from the

    desktop.

    4. A possibility to have the panel shifted to the left or

    right edge of the screen.

    5. More nice clock built-in into the panel. 🙂

    TIA!

    🙂
99. 2003-12-10 11:36 am

    Anonymous

    speaking of integration – any chance one might see some sort of “konqueror for gnome” some time in the future, means file- and webbrowser combined?

    i’m used to use that (and, of course, many others, too…) in windows (a lot), and it’s the only major reason that makes me sometimes think about switching to kde.
100. 2003-12-10 11:53 am

     Anonymous

     > 1. _Good_ fonts in gnome-terminal. These days, I have to

     > use either rxvt or xterm while running Gnome.

     Right click in the terminal, select “Edit current profile” and you’ll see a dialog appear with a “Font:” option. So in fact, you CAN select what font(s) you want to use in gnome-terminal. You can hardly blame GNOME for what fonts your distro ships with.

     > 4. A possibility to have the panel shifted to the left

     > or right edge of the screen.

     This is possible and very accessible. I bet you’ve never even used GNOME.
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