-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Emmanuele Bassi schrieb: > On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 14:34 +0200, Sebastian Pölsterl wrote: > >> I think it would be a big mistake to omit applets in the new gnome desktop >> evolution. > > why? > > we've been changing the platform gradually over the years, mostly by > deprecating stuff and including new functionality. nevertheless, I > haven't heard a single justification for the continued existence of > "applets". > > what do applets provide, nowadays, and are they even remotely useful? > what can deskbar-applet provide that cannot be implemented with > something that does not sit inside a 24x24 icon on the most valued piece > of screen real estate? isn't a gnome-do approach equivalent to the > deskbar-applet? why tomboy-applet is so special? it's basically a > launcher with a custom context menu. also, starting up deskbar-applet > *and* tomboy as applets on my panel causes my desktop more to start up > on login; not great turn ons, especially when there are developers out > there trying to get the boot-to-UI process down in the seconds range. > I agree that the current applet paradigm is outdated and it doesn't do well when you have a lot of applets or an applet that takes some time to load. But those are the problems we want to solve, right? I'm not saying that we should keep the whole applets system, but I want something similar to it. I don't care if it's called applet or widget or whatever, if it's in the panel or somewhere else. For me the idea of applets is that you can access information/functionality with minimum effort. Let's say deskbar-applet would be an application started from the menu. That would make deskbar-applet useless, because it should help you starting applications and doing tasks with less effort. Now if I have to start deskbar-applet first, I can just open the application I want to in the first place.
> [...] > > yes, it was all good with GNOME 1.x, but even for 2.x the amount of > applets has been steadily decreasing - also because writing an applet is > not trivial (as it involves dealing with some of the most obscure and > less documented parts of our development platform). people have been > abusing the system notification area with all sorts of crap (beagle, > tomboy, etc.) because writing an applet is *boring* (server files > anyone?) and *hard* (weird build changes, hard to debug uses, completely > different APIs for handling the menus), and it really doesn't provide > you with much functionality (wow, an icon and a context menu!). > > so, please: saying "it would be a mistake" without providing reasons why > it would be good to have applets support in the first place it's not > going to convince me that we should keep them. > You're right that writing an applet with the current framework is extremely painful and difficult to understand, but again that's what we want to change, right? If we can make creating an applet easier maybe people decide to write applets again. If one can easily write an applet one can easily adjust his desktop without being an expert in programming. Because applets tend to be those little programs that make your live a little bit easier they *do* make a difference. - -- Greetings, Sebastian Pölsterl -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAknrLwoACgkQ1ygZeJ3lLIehbgCeMuEFUi9CllbTWtBZdT4iz1Km StsAnjOS1WVgpAXX7oj2cAgr+fvMl0HE =QaMC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
