On 2/11/07, Étienne Bersac <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > > It's more usable that your proposal (get someone to start something from > > scratch) as it exists, so I don't see your point. Elisa has exactly the > > same goals as the Apple and Microsoft media centres. > > Hi, my proposal was just a braindump, useful in case no project were up. > Since Elisa is on, and pigment seems very nice, my "proposal" worth > nothing ! However, it seems Elisa is not "Gnome" enough. Is there plan > to integrate it ?
There are three ways something can be more gnome-y: (1) interoperates well with existing GNOME technologies (2) uses GNOME UI metaphors/HIG. (3) uses GNOME libraries. I'd suggest that (1) is critical for a 'GNOME-y' media center, and that the other two are at best likely problematic. To elaborate a bit on (1): What I'd like is that when I get a new laptop and a new media player box, to download two CDs (ignore the underlying OS for now): one that is a 'desktop' and the other a 'media center'. When I install the desktop, I get what we all know and love: something fairly easy to use, powerful, etc. GNOME 2.x. When I install the media center, I want it to immediately interoperate with that desktop- no setup, no thinking, I want it to Just Fucking Work. That to me is what I mean to be GNOME-y. My f-spot should have 'publish to the TV' option; my rhythmbox should immediately read music files from the media box, and vice versa; all my file dialogs should suddenly offer a save location on the media server (inc. my bittorrent client, which maybe should automatically offer to save to a video directory?); my ipod plugged into my desktop should allow me to get music files from my media server (my media server is under a desk so I can't plug the ipod into it), etc. Potentially it should offer to be the automatic backup server for my regular desktop files, since presumably my media box has tons of free space. (In my dream world, my N800 also immediately does smart things.) To me, that level of automatic, seamless interoperation with existing GNOME apps is what it means for a media center to be 'GNOME-y'. Note that in many cases this probably means hacking on the desktop apps as well, but such is life- we can't just expect to have a good user experience by hacking on one code base. There may be some (3): * muine does a great job thinking about albums and album covers; elisa currently does not do that as far as I can tell. Sharing that code (instead of reinventing that wheel) would be great. * elisa already does use pango, I believe? (maybe I'm confusing it with opened-hand's clutter?)(I see that it uses cairo through 'pigment'; I'm sort of surprised that pigment and clutter seem to be substantially overlapping.) Hard to see (2): * radically different resolutions and font needs, not to mention wanting more visually pleasing (aka non-gtk themed) UI * not wanting file/edit/view menus everywhere; heirarchical menus being crappy, etc. I do agree that it is *critical* that we have a GNOME-y media center like this- Apple is going to do this with their Apple TV; Microsoft is doing this with XBox. We must push forward and innovate in this space if we want to remain interesting/relevant in home spaces in the future. But we shouldn't hobble it by being any more 'GNOME-y' than good, seamless integration requires. Luis _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list