Hello Everybody,

I think there is a lot to like about GNOME Shell, and where the project is
going, but I wonder a little about the implementation (though I very much a
n00b, so it may in fact be my own ignorance (and, if so I am very sorry)).

At this stage for instance, I don't understand the reason the LookingGlass
console doesn't just use an instance of gnome-terminal, that being a much
nicer interface to work with IMHO (eg. better wrapping/scrolling support,
copy-pasta, etc. - LookingGlass looks like a garage computer game's console
to me).

After testing a recent build I also wonder whether the proposed interface
should really require 3D compositing support (Clutter); yes, it would suffer
without it, but I do think that it would still be usable if there was
fallback (non-3D / no-compositing) support builtin. I do not want to have to
use a different GUI if I lose 3D acceleration - even if I do have to forfeit
live 'mini' views of my apps and other niceties!

I know this project aims to break new ground, but I do worry about taking
things too far in the name of doing so.

Respect & Regards,
Nat

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 11:00 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

> Send gnome-shell-list mailing list submissions to
>        [email protected]
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>        http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>        [email protected]
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>        [email protected]
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of gnome-shell-list digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: Concept attached + ideas (Andre "Osku" Schmidt)
>   2. Re: Request for comment (GNOME Shell team): release date for
>      GNOME 3.0 (Willie Walker)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:39:20 +0100
> From: "Andre \"Osku\" Schmidt" <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Concept attached + ideas
> Message-ID: <1257341960.2674.112.ca...@koala>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> On Mon, 2009-11-02 at 21:19 +0000, Jimmy Forrester-Fellowes wrote:
>
> > The workspaces could be saved so when you boot up your computer you
> > can return to a workspace just the way it was when you left it.
>
> this is exactly what i wanted to have since i've used computers with
> multiple windows. (hey, i started with *-DOS:)
>
> but, isn't this still a problem in the application ?
> (haven't looked/followed on this since years)
>
> some apps do and some don't save information (or allow control from
> outside) on what files were open, where the cursor was, undo/redo,
> etc... (i assume window positioning can globally be saved by the window
> manager)
>
> and to tell the apps which saved "workspace" to open, i fear that it
> will never happen that major floss apps agree on an api to control this
> from outside. (even lash[0] is not much used, and there are not so many
> apps in audio space)
>
> but i really hope i'm just too deep in my cave and missed something, and
> it's already (at least, in near future) possible to save the states of
> an application in a workspace/file/what ever...
>
> <obligatory web search>
>
> found a really interesting tool: http://cryopid.berlios.de/
> sounds like a solution to use right away, hmm...
>
> cheers
> .andre
>
> [0] http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/lash
>
> ps. i have been playing with the idea to make these "workspaces" in a
> virtual machine (one workspace = one virtual machine), so i would have
> 100% the same workspace as i left it (cause the vm is just "freezed").
> but waiting for like 4 OS'es to boot _after_ the main OS, doesn't sound
> much fun...
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:25:02 -0500
> From: Willie Walker <[email protected]>
> To: Pi?eiro <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Request for comment (GNOME Shell team): release date for
>        GNOME 3.0
> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Thanks API!
>
> I think focusing on GNOME Shell a11y via AT-SPI is a great goal to focus
> on rather than puzzling over general clutter a11y.  The end result will
> be that at least a very specific needed problem will get solved, and
> perhaps a more general solution will be created in the process.
>
> My understanding is that the Shell Toolkit (ST) used by GNOME Shell is
> an NBTK fork and is probably the place where AT-SPI/ATK widget work
> might live.  If you were to look into this space and give us an
> evaluation of the work necessary to make ST accessible, it would be
> awesome.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Will
>
> Pi?eiro wrote:
> > From: Owen Taylor <[email protected]>
> >
> >>  Accessibility:
> >>
> >>   Two big areas of work here: one is keynav, the second is exposing
> >>   the user interface tree to AT's. Keynav is partially there, but
> >>   there's a ton of work to make sure that *everything* is keynavigable.
> >
> > Anyway, the key navigation, after read some mails in the mailing
> > lists, and some comments in the bugzilla, it is not just a
> > specific-a11y request, but something that most of the users could
> > benefit from.
> >
> >>   Exposing the UI tree will likely fall out of the work that is being
> >>   done with Cally, though the exact relationship of that with Clutter
> >>   (is it a separate library) is not, to my knowledge, completely
> >>   finalized.
> >
> > No, it is not completely finalized (it is any library completely
> > finalized?), but the talk with Joan Marie help me to prioritize the
> > missing features to implement.
> >
> >>   But exposing a raw tree of clutter actors is in no way
> >>   interesting, so there's probably considerably *more* work to make
> >>   sure that the tree exposed from gnome-shell meaningful represents
> >>   the objects and actions on them, and likely some AT-side to work to
> >>   figure out how to interact with objects in gnome-shell that had no
> >>   correspondence in the GNOME 2 desktop, like the Overview itself.
> >
> > The fact that all clutter objects are exposed is a issue detected
> > since the first time that I saw the full tree (ie: has sense from the
> > a11y POV to expose a ClutterBehaviour?), and commented on my GUADEC
> > talk [1]. One option could be implement a way to "hide" the objects
> > that you don't require, like Webkit folks are doing right now (ie
> > [2]).
> >
> > Anyway, this is not in my list of priorities. AT applications were
> > making this kind of filtering for a long time (if you see a tree
> > hierarchy of objects with glade in a GTK+ aplication, you would see
> > that you don't need to navigate or interact with all the objects, the
> > container hierarchy, etc.).
> >
> > Right now, I think that the priority is get ORCA interacting with the
> > GNOME-shell, at least in basic way.
> >
> >
> >>   (Editorial: unfortunately, accessibility in GNOME has too often been
> >>   partial technical solutions and unfulfilled promise. While not
> >>   regressing on the technical side is important, I don't think that's
> >>   the interesting thing - the interesting thing is to make progress
> >>   on the user experience here. So we shouldn't be grading ourself
> >>   on whether we continue exposing a UI tree to AT's, but whether we
> >>   have AT's that can take that information and present a coherent
> >>   user experience based on it.)
> >
> > Well, I think that it is a two way problem/solution: yes, the AT
> > applications will require to take the information and present it in a
> > coherent way, but in order to make that, GNOME-Shell requires to
> > expose that properly.
> >
> > A quick example of that, that I can made as recently hildon-desktop
> > was being public [3], and it is using cally (well using the old name,
> > but using it).
> >
> > It has a task launcher that, surprisingly, allows you to launch the
> > apps. It is basically a grid with several ClutterTexture used as
> > buttons. In the past this was just a ClutterActor (this was moved to a
> > ClutterGroup two days ago), and the grid was just a object managed by
> > it. So, from the AT didn't have any way to get the object, so a custom
> > a11y object was required to be created [4].
> >
> > This is just a example, and I can't tell if this will be required, as
> > I need a deep review GNOME-shell. But in the same way that
> > hildon-desktop required some work, and the hildon widgets required
> > HAIL, there is a high possibility of that.
> >
> > However, I agree that right now the a11y support on gnome-shell
> > requires more work in the base library (Cally). But, my idea is, after
> > solve the issues pointed by Joan Marie in the Boston Summit, orient
> > the development of Cally in a real application, in this case,
> > gnome-shell, to have a target of evolution, instead of just implement
> > atk features inside cally without a specific reason.
> >
> > To finalize: the other problematic thing not commented here is the
> > Gtk-Clutter integration. I made some questions about that on the
> > Boston Summit, but I would like to confirm that:
> >
> >   * Right now there are some Gtk elements on the Gnome-shell (ie: the
> >     user info panel)
> >   * The idea is remove that in a future.
> >
> > I'm right? On my tests with gnome-shell, the gail-cally interaction
> > gave me some problems. The difference between a mixed clutter-gtk
> > application and a pure clutter (or gtk) is really important. A mixed
> > environment have several issues to solve.
> >
> > Best regards, and sorry for the long mail
> >
> > [1]
> http://people.igalia.com/apinheiro/files/cally_guadec_2009_slides.pdf.gz
> > [2] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25897
> > [3] http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle-hildon-desktop
> > [4]
> http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle-hildon-desktop/hildon-desktop/blobs/master/src/a11y/launcher/hda-launcher-page.c
> >
> > ===
> > API ([email protected])
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-shell-list mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
>
>
> End of gnome-shell-list Digest, Vol 13, Issue 7
> ***********************************************
>
_______________________________________________
gnome-shell-list mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list

Reply via email to