I’ve been using E17 for almost a year since i tried gnome 3 and realised it couldn’t be configured the way i find most productive and since KDE dropped compiz fusion it also now can’t be setup the same way and because i like my window manager to look good its not the 90’s anymore, Enlightenment became the best choice.
With the upcoming release i have some thoughts and ideas about improving the users experience most of these are as much to stimulate discussion as much as anything else if none of them are implemented i won’t care too much, after all i don’t have the time to implement them. While enlightenment is a great window manager in my opinion the best, it has one or 2 weaknesses mostly due to its nature over the last 12 years, not having a stable release with most people needing to build from source. Moving from supporting a bunch of developers and experienced linux users to the point where anyone picking up Linux for the first time can use E17 is a essential move if E17 is to become one of the major window managers. This essentially means that we should expect that users don’t know how to build from source and we will be relying on distributions to provide everything needed for a good E17 experience. Being someone who is not a packager and has no experience doing anything like it i think moving to a single build tree and efl lib is a great start. There are 2 other areas that i can see as issues the first being applications when i am building with easy e17 i struggle to work out what’s a application what’s stable and what’s worth building maybe there needs to be a stable and development directory for applications in svn instead of having them all in the root directory. Similarly with E-MODULES-EXTRA the poll a couple of weeks back showed that a lot of us use at least a few modules each but if the common ones like taskbar, cpu, net, comp scale don’t get moved into E17 and are left as extras they will risk being left out by some distro’s that only want stable packages or can’t be bothered figuring out what is worth packaging. Again i’d suggest a directory for stable modules and one for development modules so that distributions can easily find and produce 1 package of extra modules. Maybe it could even have a single build script as well as individual ones even a script that can be run that will call the individual configures makes and installs. >From a users point of view i don’t want to install 1 package for each module i use its just a waste of time when you can unload them and they don’t use resources anyway. I do currently use daily packages on most of my machines and i imagine i would swap them to stable build at least until there’s a feature added that i want. On these machines i would also prefer to run E17 just from a package manager because i know the packages will be there and let’s face it its easier. There's 1 or 2 things that i’d also like to suggest in terms of features. I like the way that when you first load E17 and have no profile you go through a series of steps to setup your profile. I am aware that there shouldn’t be too many things in this configuration because we don’t want to overwhelm the users but i have suggestions for one or two more additions mostly because i’m a little selfish and it would get E17 configured the way i like it almost straight away but i’m guessing it will also help anyone coming from Gnome 2/Compiz fusion and Windows. * The first isn’t so much a request for a extra feature in this list but somewhere in the settings panel to reset your profile and go through the config from scratch. I know from experience it took me 2 or 3 times to go through before i figured everything out. It would be nice to be able to load and save (import/export) profiles as well. As well as parts of profiles like keybindings (I normally keep them the same across machines at least and they are fiddlyier and more time consuming to set up but that part's not a biggy. * The next is a request that in the initial config add a dialog to select the number of workspaces / virtual desktops and if there is more then 1 row selected replace the current Ctrl + Alt + Up / Down with move workspace up and down. It would be also nice if Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Arrow key was bound to move window in the arrow direction as this is what compiz fusion had. The binding for Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Left/Right could be added anyway as there is no bindings on them currently. *Another is shelf config maybe its default position (Top/Bottom), but more critically whether the contents contain the current defaults, or my proposed alternative would be to have a full width shelf with start on the left (Yes i know you can get the main menu from clicking the desktop and i never use it because i use the everything launcher, but anyone else who ever uses my computer uses it because its recognisable enough as its used by several major window managers, after that id have the taskbar then systray battery etc. This would depend on these modules being easily available as mentioned above. * Animations are another thing i’d suggest adding here partly because in a few reviews i have read people have complained about them being excessive, I saw some changes to the default the other day but i haven’t reloaded my profile to see what change this will make, personally i struggle to use anything more then still. The second reason is currently there hidden pretty well in Composite->Effects if i was a new user i’d struggle to find them here. I was going to say something about themes here but i just covered it in the email on that topic The last and possibly most controversial proposal i have is bringing back the forum I know there was one in the past and it was removed because it wasn’t used and now the mailing lists and IRC are used. From the point of view of someone who is 25 and didn’t really start using Linux until i got to University it was only a few years back i started using IRC (I probably should start using it more again) and only in the last 1 or 2 years i started paying attention to mailing lists. So my feelings are that nowadays a lot of the Linux community does not know to use both our main forms of contact. We are already giving these new users that may be trying E17 a small learning curve in terms of trying a new window manager but if they struggle with this to get help currently they are faced with the much greater learning curve of trying to get help on IRC or a mailing list. Also when a solution is provided on IRC if someone joins 2 hrs later with the same question it has to be answered again, and yes mailing lists don’t have this problem but if the community grows which i hope it does and there become more users with more questions forums scale much better and are much easier to navigate then mailing lists. The forum could also be set up to provide a rss feed or mail digest so that people who have been working or following the project for a long time don’t need to change their behavior other than subscribing to another list or rss feed. Again these are just my thoughts and ideas about ways the community and E17 can improve for new members if you disagree i won’t take it personally this is mostly just a list of things that i thought may be worth discussing before a release and so i’m just trying to provoke some discussion on topics that i think are worth it. If they’ve been discussed on IRC recently i’m sorry the firewall at work doesn’t allow IRC and kicks freenode webchat every couple of hours so it In terms of the ideas i have that relate to code if no one seriously objects to them one day i may get around to implementing them unfortunately due to my current personal situation that's not likely before the end of the year. Cheers to you all again for your fine work i appreciate it every day because you make my job easier by providing me with a sensible environment to work in and if you read the whole lot well done it ended up being longer than i intended. Simon http://simotek.net/tech ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel