Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?
On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 7:12 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: > In the next couple of weeks I will design the UI for apps to request > privileges on Ubuntu Touch. Yay! > > When installing an app, Android shows you a list of privileges the app > will require -- accessing your contacts, accessing your current > location, and so on. If you decline, the app doesn't install. > > This is poor design. Of all the time you spend with an app, the moment > you're about to install it is the moment when you know the least about > it. So it's the moment when you're least able to make informed > decisions about granting those privileges. And if an app developer can > assume that consent will be uninformed, they're more likely to abuse > that consent. > > Cyanogenmod is working around that, by letting you reduce an app's > privileges after installation. But that requires you to notice, and > care, and remember, and know how to change it -- four difficult things. > > On Ubuntu, an app will request a privilege during runtime. For > example, a game might have a "find my friends who already play this > game" function, that accesses your contacts. The game would work just > fine if you don't use this function. But if you do use it, Ubuntu > would then -- and only then -- ask you if you want to grant the app > access to your contacts. I agree this is a good model. Still, I worry about the possibility of having a lot of "are you sure" dialogs in a nicely integrated application. For the act of adding an online account, I think that should be as simple as choosing an online account from the system Online Accounts dialog. The interface will need to clearly communicate that in choosing an account you are granting "Foo app" permission to use it, but I don't think there's a reason to have anything else on top. Similar deal with documents or contacts: there are some odd cases where apps don't want to use the system's Contacts dialog, but I think in most cases they should be able to trigger that dialog, and have access to specific (selected) contacts granted implicitly. MacOS X seems to be doing that nowadays, and Plash (which was an intriguing idea that didn't seem to get anywhere) had that sort of thing happening for file choosers: http://plash.beasts.org/powerbox.html. The other bit I wonder about is how this might affect something like the "Recent Files" list in an application. Do you think that sort of thing would work cleanly, or should we be thinking about a replacement? (Or do people even use that?). One thing that drives me mad with Android's approach is lots of apps ask for permanent access to your contacts for a single thing that they do, once, ever, but then iOS has driven me mad working in the other direction, so I'm really excited to see what you have in mind :) -- Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Source packages appropriate by default?
On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Dale Amon wrote: > Source is an educational tool. > Learning command line is a lesson in taking control of your own computer. > Kids explore. > > Make sure J Random's computer is full of things to intrigue and > lead a 13 year old to the power of the source. Personally, I use apt-get source for one thing: the little note that tells me which bzr branch I can use, instead. (There's probably a better command for that, but I don't know what it is). Using the bzr branch always works better for me. It's easier to keep track of my changes and submit them (instead of remembering when it's too late that I'm working without any kind of version control), and I can use bzr builddeb to reliably create an installable package with those changes. There are also way fewer junk files. I get the source, and that's it, instead of a bunch of different tar.gz files that are going to be entirely meaningless for someone who is just exploring the system ;) Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: The place of the Ubuntu Software Center regarding Steam, Desura and others
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 11:00 PM, David Klasinc wrote: > Implementation wise, I think the best way would be if PPA system can be > extended to offer necessary support for selling software. This way Steam, > Desura and alike could offer a simple PPA. PlayOnLinux could probably do > this already. > > Regards, > David I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I think there is about a 0.1% chance of Steam using a Debian package repository to install Linux software. Their system is known for quickly and immediately updating games, as soon as updates appear. This is very important to keep them in sync with other players. Apt and dpkg don't offer that for free, and I can't think of a practical reason beyond that for Valve to bother with packaging everything when it can just be shipped in a standard format: 'here are the game files: put them $somewhere'. The best we can do is anticipate that and think about software installation in a world where some common applications manage the job outside of Debian's tutelage. People use and like Desura (and likely will Steam) and SC won't be replacing them, but maybe, with some very simple common interfaces, it can augment them in a way that makes sense. Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 4:13 PM, Colin Watson wrote: > On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 01:37:20PM -0800, Dane Mutters wrote: >> Colin Watson wrote: >> > Given our scale, I'd say that the neighbourly thing to do is for Ubuntu >> > installs to only touch Ubuntu network resources. However, that isn't to >> > say that an Ubuntu service couldn't deal with fetching a set of >> > per-language feeds of interesting content from somewhere else, and then >> > multiplex those out to clients installing Ubuntu (which would also allow >> > filtering, swapping in some entirely different feed later, etc.). >> > Perhaps talk with the Canonical sysadmins about the practicalities of >> >> What if we were to have this feed on Twitter, but instead of pulling >> content directly from Twitter to the installer, copy it to an Ubuntu server >> first, and pull it from the Ubuntu server to the installer? > > Yes, I think that's more or less what I meant. :-) I would suggest not > tying the implementation to a single social networking site; but having > it on an Ubuntu server should make it easy to change later. Thanks for all the positive feedback and the suggestions! They're all awesome and I'm fighting the urge to worry about all of them at once. For the no network access question, I was thinking of using the area typically reserved for a picture, on the right side of last slide. With no network connection the Twitter feed would be replaced by a screenshot of whatever the slide is about (support, at the moment), or maybe just a nice picture like it has in the first slide. (See http://people.ubuntu.com/~dylanmccall/ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu/preview/). Now you mention it, it might work better to use a dedicated slide. My only mockup so far consists of a terrible drawing made with a pen that I think has hallucinogenic properties, because everything looks better to me while I'm using it. This'll be my weekend project, unless someone with good taste beats me to it :) Great point about it being easy to change if there's a proxy service we own. I do suspect it's a long shot that this could work for 5 years straight (given that Twitter was only launched in 2006), so that makes a lot of sense indeed. I posted a little question at https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/5148 about the bandwidth problem. I'd like to get _something_ in for alpha 2, so that'll likely be pulling straight from Twitter via some simple means. Should be helpful for testing! Then, I'd like to build something that mimics the search widget using a (simple) custom feed, grabbed from a web service that periodically runs (and caches) searches, which shouldn't be too hard to build (at least in the sense that it'll do what is asked of it). As well as being neighbourly, all the hacky bits could live there, saving a lot of worry and a bit of space. The tricky bit for me will be getting somewhere to put that fancy web service. I guess I can make a prototype on my own end, but it would not do to point the real thing at my personal web space. (For both monetary and ethical reasons. Especially ethical ones. Honest!). That can be fixed somehow, I'm sure :) Dylan PS: I seem to have gathered a laundry list of things that I need to wander over to Canonical IS and get their help with. Who should I talk to about that, anyway? :) -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
The Ubuntu install slideshow for Precise should be a pretty ordinary little copy update, I think, so it'll just kind of happen little by little in the next couple months, as it does. Might be nice to tinker with it in Q, but that's the future, and the future can go jump in a lake for all I care :b One thing I would like to do is fix the last of the very English-looking pictures: the Ask Ubuntu one. (Well, especially very English-looking), and that is why I'm subjecting this list to a large and rambly email. I wonder if there would be any opposition to a live Twitter stream in that screenshot's place, where available, showing tweets containing #ubuntu? This would be on the last page of the slideshow. (By "Twitter stream" I'm talking about this thing, or something like it, styled to look pretty: https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/widget_search). I know Twitter is a proprietary service, but with my initial poking at the idea, there's a very diverse crowd represented in that search. I think it would be a neat way to quietly showcase the Ubuntu community as a living, breathing thing that exists right now, and it would say “see? you're not alone!”. And, hopefully, (most likely), the tweets will all be positive and welcoming. There is the issue that this stream needs to live (and be consistent) for five years, and I think that can be handled by some defensive js code, which we'll already need for the event that there's no Internet connection. It's also going on the assumption that, in five year's time, Twitter's stream for #ubuntu will still be nice to read, but I think that's a likely enough assumption. We can make the search language-specific (search Twitter with lang:zh, for example), though I worry that could make it a little sparse in some cases. We _might_ want to filter against negative language, in which case the search query would need to be localized. I think that can be done, too. I'm just throwing the idea around. Any other thoughts? Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: why is there no mention of the word "Linux" on the ubuntu.com frontpage?
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Martin Owens wrote: > I'm more chaffed by the lack of 'Free Software' or 'Free and Open > Source' on the homepage. That shows a lack of support more than > including the word 'Linux' there. > > Martin, There is, actually, a block of text that mentions it: “Ubuntu is, and always will be, absolutely free. Created by the best open-source experts from all over the world, Ubuntu is available in 24 languages and ready for download today.” I, for one, find the word “experts” maybe a little troublesome. Of course, the people who work on Ubuntu are brilliant, but just using that word makes the development community — and free software in general — sound a little exclusive. Like you have to be an expert to be involved. The whole thing sounds a little corporatey to me, really. It's a trope that conjurs an image of thousands of nameless employees working for a big machine that happens to have lots of offices. -- Dylan PS: While we're talking about the website, the dots in the carousel are still backwards compared to the animation. The problem is the float:right in “#u1104 .consumer-page .ubuntu-homepage .all-feats a, #u1104 .consumer-page .ubuntu-homepage .how-free a”. That rule is catching the dots by accident, when it really only wants to catch the “Take a closer look” link. You must go deeper :) -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Chromium vs Firefox?
Oh no, not this thread again! Folks, we have proven one thing with these threads over the last year: it is impossible to adequately solve the Chromium vs. Firefox debate in a mailing list. There are just too many variables; install size, stability, accessibility, support lifecycle, upstream involvement, integration, consistency… the list goes on. If I can make a suggestion, we should really use this time to figure out what should be discussed at UDS (and how), and then discuss it at UDS where everyone with stakes in the discussion can jump in and hopefully we can come to a satisfying conclusion that doesn't involve “browser X doesn't have feature B that I use.” Thanks! Dylan *Trying very hard to not mention that I prefer Chromium :b* -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Unity, consistency and password-protected web pages
Hello, Something I've noticed lately has me a little concerned. I am hoping you folks can put my fears at ease! When I look at bug reports for Unity, I often encounter links to what I assume are design documents internal to Canonical. Here is one of those bug reports: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/729009 (I realise this one was filed recently on an issue noticed after implementation, but let's view it as an example). The description points at an image: https://chinstrap.canonical.com/~sabdfl/11_04/desktop_and_netbook/dash/Dash_desktop/unity_desktop_dashboard_23_02_11_stages_fixed_01.png I'm going to wander out on a limb here and assume Unity's design is finalized and this isn't a matter of people (sensibly) holding off on publicizing stuff until it's actually useful. I can understand the need (and the desire) to do some things internally, but I wonder if this is always happening intentionally, or if it's something being done by accident. This specific bug report looks like it could be a bitesize bug; a nice first bug fix for somebody. However, because the bug description is effectively inaccessible to any but those with access to chinstrap.canonical.com, it has to be fixed by a Canonical employee. (It rings a bell that the bug report could only have been filed by a Canonical employee, too). Personally, I think anyone looking at the bug tracker for a free software project should be able to understand and solve any publicly viewable bug report given appropriate knowledge and resources. We would benefit from having a very consistent design vision (and we have in the past), but with major components discussing internal design documents on the public bug tracker, it's starting to appear that only components driven by Canonical will be able to maintain that consistency. Of course, that worrying aside, in some places we do this really well! The branding assets are great, Unity's wiki page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity) is up to date with useful _technical_ information, and the NotifyOSD / Indicators stuff has always been a wonderful example of good communication. So, I hope I don't come across as grumpy or anything. I just know we can do this a lot better. -- Dylan McCall -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Launchpad bug linking to U1 client spec behind a secret login
Hi! I was hunting for information on the bug (it _is_ a bug, right?) where the U1 Nautilus extension in Maverick shows its bar thingy all the time, instead of just under folders that are synced. (I would hope that's a bug, by the way…) I found this in Launchpad: http://code.launchpad.net/bugs/598095 Its objective wasn't totally clear to me, but the description referred to “section 3.1 of file sync spec” at https://docs.google.com/a/canonical.com/Doc?docid=0AU5sFuLRpCpBZGZra2pqY2pfMjY1ZjRodG5nZDg#2_1_A_Enable_Ubuntu_One_servic That link leads me to a login form demanding an email @canonical.com. I stripped out the /a/canonical.com part and got the document, so I'm hoping that is just an innocent error on the reporter's part. (I also took the liberty of changing that link in the bug report) :) The end of the document states it is linking (manually) from wiki.canonical.com which is also under tight access permissions. Of course, I wouldn't disagree you're _allowed_ to keep these specs under wraps, but I think it can be polarizing and I haven't seen it with other projects attached to Ubuntu at this point in their lives. I'm comfortable with that kind of manoeuvre if the project is _new_ (it's only natural), but u1-client has been a part of Ubuntu for a while now. Given that u1-client is free software, in Ubuntu's main repository and installed by default, it concerns me to think that I can't see a recent specification to help with implementation, check for errors, or make sure whatever I am doing jives with where Ubuntu One is going. Could someone please explain why this is? Thank you, Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Shouldn't update-manager's "check for updates" setting have an "hourly" option?
On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 7:49 PM, Nathan Dorfman wrote: > Personally, I would prefer it, and I think it's quite reasonable. Thoughts? > > -- > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss > Keep in mind that checking for updates involves a non-trivial download of package lists from all repositories the user is subscribed to. Unfortunately, it is a much more intense operation than it appears. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Removal of notification area
> To be serious, I don't like this kind of forcing one's own view of > usability onto the users. GNU/Linux is all about free customization. > Give the user your preferred applications, but let him choose what > he/she wants to use. GNU/Linux is absolutely not “about” anything, especially not free customization at runtime. If we are going to do this, it's all about freely modifying source code and building those customized solutions. With that said, Linux is (or should be) less about confusing runtime options than the proprietary competition. With them, those are necessities because they want to keep users happy but don't want to give them source code. Over here, we can afford to make decisive design choices to keep the platform sane and simple. If people disagree with those choices, they can make their own modifications to the software, or use someone else's modified version. Look at the mobile phone space. We have stuff like WebOS and Maemo, which are both built on top of common bits we use here on the desktop. (Actually, a surprising and pleasing number of them). Neither of those operating systems has a button to configure the panels or revert to volume-control-like-2009. But you have a choice in using them. Importantly, the developers of those operating systems were able to leverage the platform and its open source nature to build those amazing operating systems exactly the way they were meant to be, without any loose ends or wiggly bits. Naturally, WebOS and Android have some of the best SDKs out there. Why shouldn't that be allowed on the desktop? Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Progress-bar Menu for Indicator Applet?
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 8:00 AM, Evan wrote: > I was in the middle of a couple of things, and realized I needed to > reorganize my workspaces because they were getting quite messy. > > By the end, I had an entire workspace dedicated to progress-bars: > - Downloads (Firefox and Transmission) > - File Moves/Copies > - Software Center Installs > - F-Spot Importing > - Brasero CD Burning > > Since we already have a Messaging Menu, why not a "Progess Bar" Menu > for indicator applet? Applications could register there and use it the > same way they use the Messaging Menu. This would allow users to close > or 'hide' all of the little dialogues they end up with for > long-running tasks, and have everything nicely grouped in their panel. > > Thoughts? > > Evan There is a GSoC project for GNOME, covering this problem. Here you go: http://home.in.tum.de/~sickert/archives/2010/05/09/introducing_my_gsoc_project/index.html May as well follow that and see about patching in libindicate support :) Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Package screenshots concerns
Hello! Software Centre makes package screenshots (via screenshots.debian.org) extremely prominent, which is wonderful. Before I dive in, I think this really improves how packages are presented and I would never want to go back. Having said that, I think the screenshots stuff is currently problematic. First of all, some of these just don't look right. At the moment every screenshot seems to have a different desktop environment, theme, application font, or something. The Ubuntu Manual people use a nice little app, called Quickshot, to solve this kind of thing. ( http://ubuntu-manual.org/quickshot ). Is anyone working on that? There is the unfortunate issue that Debian doesn't really aim for a special cohesive look, whereas Ubuntu does… More importantly, many of these screenshots are outdated! The screenshot for Miro is from version 1. Its current major version is 3, which has some very big changes that are visible in the UI. Screenshot uploaders can (but aren't required to) specify version numbers. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there is no way to retrieve a screenshot based on package name + version. As a result, http://screenshots.debian.net/screenshot/anjuta , and by extension Software Centre, shows the shot for Anjuta version 2.4.2-1+lenny1, even though there is a screenshot for 2.28.1.0-1 available. Another thing worries me a little: screenshots.debian.net does not accept screenshots for non-free packages. Software Centre, on the other hand, probably shouldn't be that picky. The new specification foundations-m-software-center-screenshots-for-third-parties[1] suggests package meta-data that points at a screenshot, not far from the existing Homepage field, as an “alternative solution.” I think it would be worth discussing that as THE solution, where the Debian Screenshots service kicks in as a fallback from that in all cases. (It's still excellent for any package that is specific to Debian or lacks a stable web presence). [1] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/foundations-m-software-center-screenshots-for-third-parties I'm concerned that, if the problems aren't addressed, we'll end up with a lot of screenshots being catalogued insufficiently. Later on, that could lead to either wasted effort or cruft. I also get the impression that this service detaches the presentation of an application from its respective maintainer, and from its original developer. If I make a game, for example, and I'm really proud of it, and it's in the repositories, I would want my own screenshot attached to it and I would be Really Irritated if some random person uploaded anything else. Thanks, Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: SRWare Iron: Chromium without the data-mining
> I've posted this on the debian-devel mailing list as well. This was > posted out of a concern that Canoncial is thinking about switching > over to Chromium in later releases as Lubuntu has done already. I have > seen articles of this possibility as well. I don't feel making > Chromium the default browser is appropriate until the privacy issues > are addressed. I also feel that taking care these issues before a > switch to Chromium is even seriously considered is beneficial to > everyone. Given that the privacy concerns have been neatly documented[1] by Google including instructions on disabling the offending features, I can't shake the doubt that they could ever be addressed in some peoples' opinions. [1] http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=114836&hl=en-GB Granted, I may just be ill informed. Is there some detail being missed in that document? It's not that I have anything against Iron, of course, though I am slightly wary of their website and apparent lack of a source repository. Doesn't feel brilliantly maintained. Maybe they just need a gentle nudge in Launchpad's direction. With regards to packaging, there is a Launchpad PPA with daily builds of Chromium, so they surely have sorted out any installation and packaging quirks in that source repository. Perhaps you can get a diff with Iron's changes, and if you're incredibly lucky it'll apply smoothly. Could save you some work :) Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Removal of PulseAudio from Ubuntu
On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 3:53 PM, I.E.G. wrote: > … > Gentlemen and Ladies I have not had any success in total or in part with > PulseAudio . I have had a single trip to youtube for instance inactivate all > audio on my system(s) . I have had VLC not only fail to produce any audio > but seg_fault . I have experienced the aforementioned halting stutter and > "latency" in web stream , VLC , MoviePlayer and asterisk based softphones . > Suffice to say I didn't bother fixing or configuring it I just found the > least path of resistance to audio and deleted , disabled or otherwise worked > around it . I still to this moment as a step in installation of even, Lucid > stop just after all updates are installed and find some way to eradicate > PulseAudio. > > I just thought a response from the every day user (since 6.04) that has no > political nor development agenda might have some small use . If it works I > use it . If it doesn't I google it . If google turns up dissension and > wildly conflicting oping as to the cause of the malfunction I punt on third > down and in this case revert to ALSA which I have had success with . > … I may be misunderstanding you here, but when was the last Ubuntu release where you gave Pulse a try before removing it? It sounds like you were very very quick to do so with Lucid. However, things have changed a lot lately (given that PulseAudio is being developed extremely actively). The software works considerably better in Lucid than it did in Karmic. Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Windows controls: new button layout
> It would have been really appreciated if someone had thought of this in the > case of package upgrade. Better still, this change shouldn't require one to > have to open gconf-editor and find the place to set it -- most people that I > know who use Ubuntu don't even know what a window manager is -- let alone > that their window manager is called metacity. This should have been a > toggle-switch on the "windows" preferences dialog, something along the lines > of "look like a mac/look like windows" That is the case, actually, but it's done with no extra widgetry. Window button layout is now tied to your selected theme in 10.04. Technically, the default value for the /apps/metacity/general/button_layout key is still menu:minimize,maximize,close, so mose themes (that don't set button_layout) are still shown that way. It's just the Ambiance, Radiance and Dust themes that explicitly set button_layout to something else ;) If you want the old button layout, simply change to a different theme, for example Human, or the awesome Homosapien in apt:community-themes. Indeed, it would have been nice if the theme thumbnails reflected this, but they don't. (Come to think of it, I wish those thumbnails didn't need to be auto generated. It gets very drab having the same visual repeated again and again and again, even if it is technically informative…) If someone wants the awesome new themes but wants buttons on the right, I made an installable theme for that case: http://people.ubuntu.com/~dylanmccall/downloads/themes/Ambience_Radiance-Right.tar.gz Download it, then drag the file to the Appearance Preferences dialog to install it. Unfortunately, all sorts of people are convincing less technically focused users to go about the overcomplicated (and neither fun nor obvious) route to customizing button layout by directly altering the gconf key. I think part of this problem is a lack of nice upgrade notes (there's just the tour, which focuses on newcomers), and certain web sites which posted how-tos on this topic yet neglected to research the particulars or to update their how-tos as the landscape changed. (Okay, kudos to TechPad for having an update at the bottom of their article, but it's still small print at the bottom; people tend to read that last). Speaking of release notes, I was looking for the 10.04 release notes to see what we had going on there for the button layout change, but I actually _couldn't find them_ from ubuntu.com. Am I just going crazy? Thanks, Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Removal of PulseAudio from Ubuntu
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Ryan Oram wrote: > A great overview of the problems with PulseAudio: > http://www.webcitation.org/5kcZfOb4l > > It is 2 years old, but the facts in the article above are still > completely true. PulseAudio has made essentially zero progress in the > last 2 years, which is why it should be abandoned. I fail to see how diverging from upstream Gnome and switching audio systems AGAIN would solve any problems. As it is we have gained a lot from PulseAudio (eg: Bluetooth audio that we can actually expect end users to use), it is quite widely adopted and it is neatly integrated at this point. Now, granted, most things (gstreamer, canberra) are flexible and have (or could have) OSS4 support, but there is some significant energy required to swap these kinds of components. I think energy would be better spent sorting out the higher level APIs that application developers are actually meant to be using. We seem to have hundreds of these bouncing around, and they are all compatible with a different subset of audio frameworks. We can change underlying systems all we want, but those diagrams of the audio stack will still look awful because of all those libraries. You mention PulseAudio's high latency. I haven't followed this, but does anyone know what became of rtkit? Personally I've had an excellent audio experience in Lucid thus far (except for that funny issue with the balance slider and indicator-sound) and I believe rtkit has been merged into the kernel, but I could be mistaken about whether it's being used (or useful to begin with). Disclaimer: I'm also quite attached to positional event sounds :) Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thoughts on quitting and window controls
> Mind-boggling: yes. Lunatic: not necessarily :) Yay! > > If I'm understanding you properly, the user should have no concept of > services or processes. There is a single list of all applications, > whether they are running with a window, running as a service, or not > running at all. > When the user clicks on an application which is not running, or > running as a service, then the control window for that application > opens on top. When all of an application's windows are closed, then > the process closes (as long as no services are running). If a service > is running as well, it is responsible for garbage-collecting itself > when it is no longer doing anything (ie when rhythmbox is no longer > playing music). When a service process exits like this, the UI > shouldn't change at all - the user shouldn't even know. Indeed! I'm glad to know I made sense :) I think declaring a model for interaction with applications and windows, like this (or this, even; that would make _me_ happy at least) would go a long way since we really don't have one right now. I want to think of a window as a view. Now Close would mean "disappear that view", Minimize means "make that view really small" and Maximize means "make that view really big," and importantly that meaning should never, ever vary. The resource being viewed is just there. > > The only question I have right now about this model is the action > which occurs when an app with a window already open is clicked on in > the list. In the current windowing model, you can focus the existing > window (via the task bar) or open a second window (via the menu). With > the integrated application list, how do we nicely handle both of these > use cases? > > Cheers, > Evan This is something I think gnome-shell handles pretty well. If you click an application with open windows, it knows, so it focuses those windows on its own. Right clicking gives you an option to create a new window. (Personally, I would like a little + button to one corner of the icon so it isn't a secondary operation). As I understand it, upcoming stuff will make that kind of behaviour slightly adjustable per application. Existing applications use libunique, and I think it's an okay approach. So, right now if I have Rhythmbox running in the background and I want to choose a new playlist, I can head to Applications›Rhythmbox and the existing window is instantly focused. It's just like opening a fresh instance, as if Rhythmbox's main window really is in a different process from what plays the music (like the Telepathy stack). However, this particular job is a loopy mess under the hood! * Application sets up with DBus for the single purpose of watching for new instances trying to launch. * New instance of application is opened, sees the old one, does something. Hopefully it tells the existing instance that the user has declared interest in using it, but we never really know. * In the ideal case, the existing instance of the application either creates a new window in the current workspace (good!) or raises the old window. It's that latter case which breaks my heart: if you aren't in the same workspace as the old window, it never shows up. It sets the Urgent window hint and a tiny little item in the window list appears. Now, in the ideal case, the user journeys to the other side of his 37" screen, clicks that OTHER thing for no apparent reason, and finally sees his window... but he's sent to the wrong workspace! Gnome Shell makes that mess completely the window manager's responsibility (and the window manager is quite comfortable managing windows), so there is no likely point of failure. Not ideal, though, since it doesn't cover everything (at least not yet). Maybe we just really need a more reliable way for applications to control their own windows. (Sorry, I just realized I've been throwing around the words "application", "process" and "resource" almost interchangeably. Hopefully this isn't completely nonsense at this point). Alas, there is still the issue that, if you had the Rhythmbox controller window open and focused somewhere and it pretends to open another by moving that old window to view, your old window is no longer where you left it… As for some apps supporting multiple views, err, windows, I think it makes sense: you can only have one view per _resource_, so for Abiword that resource is a single document and, if I recall correctly, it correctly enforces that policy. Most things do. Thankfully for us, it's just really hard for an application to manage multiple windows that refer to the same thing. And it (should be) pointless, too. Every time you choose Rhythmbox from the Applications menu, you're opening a controller for a single resource: the music service (which doesn't actually exist, but makes a fine imaginary construct). So, its behaviour of only allowing one controller is quite consistent! Oh, my tea is ready! Bye :) Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@li
Re: Thoughts on quitting and window controls
On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:39 PM, Jonathan Blackhall wrote: > It's very confusing for me when I click the big 'X' in my window controls, > only to find that the application I was attempting to close has since been > minimized to my system try (or notification area or its respective indicator > applet or wherever it goes instead of quitting). Examples of programs with > this behavior include Rhythmbox and Empathy in the default install. To me, > the 'X' signifies closing and quitting the application. If I wanted to > minimize it and keep it open, I would think to click the 'Minimize' button > before clicking the 'X'. In fact, I'd argue that the only reason anyone > thinks this is appropriate is because it's what's been done in the past. > The reason I find this so frustrating is because in order for me to eXit an > application, I have to go searching through menus (File->Quit) or know some > fancy keyboard shortcuts (things that casual users never even think about). > > I can only assume that developers' theories behind this (which is definitely > not a problem unique to Ubuntu) stem from them telling themselves that no > one would actually want to Quit their application. "What they *really* mean > to do is close the window, but keep the application running silently. So > I'll just save them the trouble of accidentally quitting by changing the > function of that 'X' button." I just dislike the fact that it sends mixed > signals. After all, if I click 'X' in Firefox or in gEdit or in a whole > host of other applications, I'm quitting and completely closing it. Why > must this be different in Rhythmbox? And also, when I install a new > application, what is the 'X' going to do when I click it in this > application? > > I'm not exactly sure what I'd propose to fix this problem. I really just > think that the current way is broken. Maybe the function could be switched > to the Minimize button, but that would likewise exhibit ambiguity, although > I'd argue less so than the current incarnation. Maybe there should be a new > window button, but that doesn't seem like a very elegant solution either. I > thought about filing this as a bug, but then I thought it might be better to > generate discussion amongst developers. What are your thoughts? Do you > consider the current situation a problem? If so, what do you propose to fix > it? > > Cheers, > Jonathan > > -- > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss > > I chewed on this thought for a bit, and I think adding a "really close" button to a window would compromise what is _potentially_ a pretty well thought out bit of UI. That's not to say it is well thought out yet, but I think it could be! Conventionally, a window represents some thing the user is doing, so closing it should close that thing. A toplevel window is almost always something the user has directly triggered and is directly, purposefully interacting with, and I don't think we have anything else in the desktop that fits that role. Therefore, if the act of closing a window is affecting anything more than what that window is representing, something has gone wrong and should be fixed. For most web browsers, we're fine; the close button closes the web page associated with that window, but the application, other web pages and any current downloads (should) keep running. The rest is naturally fed by the “Just Works” philosophy; if a process is not providing anything, it should become irrelevant (probably by exiting). Firefox does this for you all the time. A lot of developers think of it as a robotic "all window are closed, so exit" deal, but I think it's more "we are no longer serving a purpose, so exit." Applications should track what they are doing for the user to decide whether they are wasting memory. Windows are remote controls for resources. In the case of Tomboy, that's a note. (When you close a window in Tomboy, you aren't destroying the note!). For Empathy, that's an instant messaging account (Telepathy). When you close the buddy list, it doesn't log you out, but you can open the buddy list and tell it to log you out. (In this case that's technically the case, too; Telepathy, Empathy, etc. are split into a whole pile of small, detached programs that run for different purposes). Rhythmbox is a different example, but let's try to fit it under the same theory. It already mostly does. The Rhythmbox main window is for controlling what music the Rhythmbox "service" (represented by its indicator icon) is playing. It just happens that the Rhythmbox service is, technically, the same process as the Rhythmbox main window. Users don't care about that, though. Someone opens Rhythmbox to control the playing music (to pause it or play it), then closes it when that is done and the service goes on in the background. If the music is stopped and Rhythmbox's controller
Moblin session just Not Working in Lucid?...
Sorry, this is an odd place to post a bug discussion, but I really don't know where else this can go and I think it's a particularly critical bug. I have regular Lucid desktop edition installed (and up to date) on a very normal netbook. Three weeks ago, I noticed Moblin is packaged in a really slick fashion for Lucid: there's moblin-session and a whole lot of moblin-panel-* packages. I installed moblin-session, which also pulled in all of those. Logged in to the Moblin session with a completely fresh account and was greeted, unfortunately, by a completely empty space. Those panel applets are started (and are running) but don't populate the panel, thus the session is unusable; the only thing that's there is the Zones feature. Filed a bug report (with logs and the aftermath of some poking) against the moblin-session package, since that's what felt sensible to me (although it could be completely the wrong thing!): https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/moblin-session/+bug/535360 Unfortunately, no activity thus far. Can anyone reproduce this? Anybody here know Moblin? Maybe we can get to the bottom of it... I'm happy to use whatever interrogation techniques are necessary on the netbook. Many thanks, Dylan McCall -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Right click menu for indicator-applet and more!
On Fri, 2010-03-05 at 11:47 -0600, Ted Gould wrote: > On Fri, 2010-03-05 at 09:39 -0800, Dylan McCall wrote: > > In my fix, I still have indicator-applet specifically only react to a > > button 1 press, but it returns True instead of False so nothing else > > will touch the button press event either. I did this because, while it > > acting just like a normal menu would be beautiful (and a direction to > > pursue when we do something about gnome-panel), it would be inconsistent > > with all the other applets. The trained behaviour could cause the same > > problem I describe here except for other applets instead, where users > > may expect a right click to open the main menu as normal. > > > > This is sort of a compromise. The user won't get the misleading menu, > > the indicator icon only seems to hold a single menu, but he must left > > click all the time. As for the applet menu, that goes on the applet's > > handle bar. (And only there). > > That's how the applet was originally when it shipped in (was it Jaunty > or Karmic, getting old...) and it was generally disliked. One of the > main reasons was that there was no way to move or remove the applet. > So, adding the right click menu was a compromise for dealing with the > idiosyncrasies of gnome-panel. While I could never understand someone > who wants to remove it from their panel, apparently there are those > people who exist ;) > > --Ted > Thanks, Ted. Indeed, I suspected something like that. However, let's not forget that in Karmic the applet only ever had a single item and wasn't replacing the notification area. In Lucid, the addition of a handle doesn't double the applet's size and there is going to be far less will to remove the applet since it isn't performing a single task of debatable value :) Dylan PS: Speaking of the notification area, I've always been curious: were there any plans to have the indicator applet present system tray icons as well, or is that always going to be two different applets? -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Right click menu for indicator-applet and more!
Hi, There is a usability issue with indicator-applet in Lucid that I consider _very_ serious. First of all, there is no drag handle for the applet, but the applet's contents are unpredictable. It is possible for the applet to have nothing in it, in which case it cannot be controlled or seen by the user. I'm not sure if it is documented, but I think the convention here is that an applet of this type has a handle (added via the PANEL_APPLET_HAS_HANDLE flag). See the window list and existing notification area applets for examples. Now, to the meat of this issue: this applet is meant to replace the notification area, preferably as quietly as possible. Any user used to the notification area will right click items in there to get their menus. In my bug report [1] I use Rhythmbox as an example: Joe wishes to exit Rhythmbox, so he right clicks what looks like the notification area icon for it (but is actually the indicator applet), pauses for a moment, then clicks "Remove from Panel." Fast forward a few minutes: "Where did my volume go? How much battery life do I have? What's going on?!" [1] I filed this as a bug report (with a possible fix) at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-applet/+bug/519553 In my fix, I still have indicator-applet specifically only react to a button 1 press, but it returns True instead of False so nothing else will touch the button press event either. I did this because, while it acting just like a normal menu would be beautiful (and a direction to pursue when we do something about gnome-panel), it would be inconsistent with all the other applets. The trained behaviour could cause the same problem I describe here except for other applets instead, where users may expect a right click to open the main menu as normal. This is sort of a compromise. The user won't get the misleading menu, the indicator icon only seems to hold a single menu, but he must left click all the time. As for the applet menu, that goes on the applet's handle bar. (And only there). There is obviously some room for debate with this. That is why I'm here :) What do you think? Thanks, Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
How should ubiquity-slideshow behave when a translation is not available? (For non-English users especially)
Hi, This is about the slideshow that plays when installing Ubuntu from the desktop live CD. I realized that it would be absolutely trivial to fall back to something simple (or just not deal with the slideshow at all!) in the event that a slideshow for the current locale is not available, where currently it always falls back to the English slideshow (or, if we haven't remembered to prune unfinished translations, a mixture of English and the selected language). My immediate assumption is that this is a good idea; it's pretty ugly and disheartening to see a presentation in a foreign language while installing an operating system that should be (and usually is!) in one's native language. On the other hand, lots of people do speak English anyway, etc... For me personally, this is uncharted territory. I don't know much about the psychology of installing software that defaults to a language other than my own, since I have never experienced that, so I thought it would be best to ask around. What are your thoughts? Would you rather see a slideshow in English, contrary to the other stuff, or nothing at all? (Of course, for most languages this needn't be a concern since the translation community is amazing, but just pretend you speak Klingon for a few minutes). Qapla' ! Dylan McCall -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Insufficiencies in Karmic's battery behavior
> Karmic's adoption of DeviceKit-Power and the latest Gnome-Power-Manager has > changed the way the GUI reports remaining battery time. Possibly relevant to this discussion is a widely "me tooed' bug report on the battery time estimate flat out not happening in Karmic: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/444881 To keep the thoughts flowing, I have a question: Is there a performance / power efficiency gain from not querying the battery as frequently as gnome-power-manager used to? Thanks, Dylan McCall -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Imagining a development news web site (for end users of ubuntu+1)
Hello! One big issue I noticed with the testing community in a development release of Ubuntu is that misinformation has a habit of spreading. For example, with Karmic, when the rules changed behind where icons get displayed, lots of users did not know what was going on. Some either thought it was a bug or a dumb change (when in fact it was a smart change :P). Similar situation with the changes to notify-osd. Angry ranters had to be told individually, almost, what the actual situation was and to please file bug reports or constructive feedback where applicable. Reading the changelogs, GNOME and Ubuntu Planet helps to that end, but both involve a lot of reading (and in the latter case some additional technical knowledge + a lot of patience). I think we could improve the experience for our testers and the quality of our bug reports if they were immediately aware of particularly important changes as they happened at the point they became available, from the perspective of Ubuntu+1. (Not months before they land downstream, not too much later). As far as I am aware, there is not really a definitive place to look for that type of information. So, I think a nice route about that is to create a web site in a news blog style, linked to from the Ubuntu Start Page for the development release (during its development until the release candidate) and as a live bookmark in Firefox's default setup. It should be reasonably low traffic but provide testers with big things that are changing, that need feedback or need help. I was poised to make a blueprint + wiki page for this, but I think it would be best to ask for feedback first. Please, fire away :) Dylan McCall -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Bug in Ubuntu Desktop 9.10 Beta: Wrong Firefox version is displayed during install
> > The package you should file the bug against is "ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu" > > > > Thanks! > > > > - Andrew > > > > Thank you for the reply. I filed the bug under the subject "Wrong > Firefox version is displayed during installation, in Launchpad". > -- > Ioannis Vranos Hi! I'm fiddling with the middle slides in a branch here, where this issue (among others) gets fixed, and some other stuff moves around on the way: https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~ubiquity-slideshow/ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu/middle-tweaks Still some work to do and feedback to collect before something gets merged, but the sooner the better. I stuck a preview on the web, so it's nice and easy: http://www3.telus.net/northlight/dylan/ubiquity-slideshow-proposed/#controls (Note that the Firefox slide in the preview lacks an icon because it reads that from your local file system, which is blocked by most browsers). I would love to know what you think :) Thanks! Dylan McCall signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
This new "report bugs using ubuntu-bug" requirement is a mess!
Okay, here is a quick, true story :) I wanted to file a bug report on ubuntu-wallpapers, because it is missing some images in its gnome-background-properties file. I had to use ubuntu-bug to get to a bug filing form. After wasting time collecting "problem information" - which is useless in this case - and using valuable resources uploading it to Launchpad, I punched in the summary to learn that this bug was already filed. Interestingly, since we are now strongly discouraging users from using the awesome web interface for Ubuntu related bugs, there's an extra, jarring step where before I could do it all on one swoop. (Now, consider crashers with ginormous dumps...). Okay, next step! I fixed it, made a deb package to test my fix, and then noticed another bug to report. I used ubuntu-bug again, knowing that the issue exists with Ubuntu's version of the package... The problem cannot be reported: This is not a genuine Ubuntu package Now that really just annoyed me. So, I must remove my simple amendment and reinstall the package simply to report a trivial bug! Granted, it makes sense in some cases, but I have a feeling this new method will seriously cripple the flow of minor bugs (eg: papercuts) by making them too much of a pain to file. Perhaps ubuntu-bug should just be strongly encouraged instead of completely enforced. -- Dylan McCall -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Replace Tomboy with Gnote?
> They were in my Japanese class going "h" at the linking between notes ;) > Most of my computer science classmates don't know what LaTeX is / how to use > it anyway (sad, yeah...). Sorry, this is wildly OT, but you should show them Lyx. I am told "it isn't real LaTeX" (even though their web site claims it is), but the program is really elegant so it's a nice way to get introduced to it all - especially with the source view pane. There's something particularly nice about the way it just won't let you have more than one space or more than one newline and corrects such errors as you go. I'm a lazy typist (and I bet lots of CS students are), so before I knew Lyx I would have excess spacing all over the place. No longer! People who freak out over such things should find it exceptionally useful. Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Replace Tomboy with Gnote?
May I quickly point out that lots of users' feedback in the realm of "ooh, Gnote is faster than Tomboy" is entirely based on the Tomboy shipped with 9.04 or earlier? There have been many speed improvements since then both in Tomboy and (as usual) the Mono runtime. Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: shameful censoring of mono opposition
On Sun, 2009-06-07 at 20:26 -0400, Mark Fink wrote: > you sound like a typical M$ appologist. do you sleep well at night? > hope they are paying you well. Not a cent, although I am quite disturbed when looking at their stuff feels like a breathe of fresh air in the 'freedom and openness,' or even general coolness department. It really shouldn't. Fast reading, by the way. Dylan McCall signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: shameful censoring of mono opposition
I'm assuming that the fact Microsoft's Silverlight download page automatically links Linux users to Moonlight (quite tastefully!) suggests they have: A. Started to have somewhat of an epiphany from within and are, in some departments, actually serious about this whole "cooperation" thing. B. Accepted Moonlight as a viable piece of software that they are ready and willing to recommend to end users without flinching. C. Pretty brightly endorsed Moonlight, and by extension Mono. (Note appropriate use of capital letters, by the way. It goes a long way towards not sounding like a raving lunatic). Now, on that "cooperation" end of things, people need to come to terms with the fact that Microsoft is a really, really huge company. There are lots of human beings in that company, many of them quite intelligent, who want to make money and put food on their family's table and live comfortable lives. They are passionate about computer software, like we are. They are geeks, hackers, they like cool stuff, etc. The XBox division is quite lovable. Here's a hint why: Not all of Microsoft depends on Windows' domination, and Microsoft as a whole can wean itself off the domination instinct as well, even with Windows. It will take time, though, starting basically at the level of Western culture. Microsoft the mega corporation isn't going anywhere soon, so perhaps if you guys really give a damn about cooperation, freedom, openness and making the world a better place you should think of the fine folks at Microsoft (of which there are many) as colleagues who happen to have a somewhat flawed world view imposed on them from above. With this whole MS .Net and Silverlight thing, I get a strong sense of that spirit and it really does feel nice. Here's the scary part: The group that seems to be most welcoming here, most warm and honest is Microsoft. While they give us cool little redirects, members of the Linux "community" set up web sites like BoycottNovel and initiate witch-hunts against innocent, hard-working and valuable contributors like Miguel de Icaza and DirectHex while accusing Microsoft of evil acts every time someone who works for them gives us the simplest act as a smile. For the sake of analogy, let's go with the erroneous viewpoint that I am singly in charge of 95% of the operating system market and had been talked into opening up. (Doesn't matter how; I'm sure we've all been talked into doing good things against our own judgement). I have the choice of either opening up with my standards or looking outwards. Outside, I see some insane hoard of clucking pitchfork-jugglers who assassinate every character that isn't 100% pure. Rather than going out there and trying to talk with them, I think I would go with my own standards and hope that the flock outside disappears on its own. I wouldn't do this out of spite, I would do this out of basic survival instincts. (Something which I probably should have put into consideration before writing this message). I've been tempted to jump ship a few times lately and it has nothing to do with lawyers, legal agreements or brain-dead CEOs. Thanks, Dylan McCall PS: Please, please stop abusing Miguel. If it wasn't for him, we would be stuck in the dark ages. And I'm not talking about Mono. PPS: I know all about the patent agreement thing and am choosing to ignore it because lawyers and corporations do not trump people. And here's a reminder: We care about people. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: On apturls and repositories
On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 00:53 +0200, Martin Owens wrote: > On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 09:48 -0700, Dylan McCall wrote: > > Sounds like the discussion at UDS about having support for adding > > repositories (or at least PPAs) via apturl didn't get very far. At risk > > of prolonging a stalemate, I get the impression blocking this idea for > > safety reasons is completely pointless. > > The session was polite and we talked about everyone's views. Some of > these choices are down to political background more than technical > options. Although Alexander Sack didn't help by suggesting that the > decision had already been made at All Hands. > > As I said I would, I've compiled some mock-ups of what I was talking > about with various people: > > http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/ubuntu-apt-url-and-the-white-list/ > > I'm going to add the same to the whiteboard for the blueprint now. Thanks for the information! That is a COOL mockup. Really leverages the power of GPG, too :) Isn't Microsoft's software signing model an example of the centralized trust concept that a whitelist in Ubuntu would imply? Doesn't work very well. Users just click through it and don't care when the message isn't there. It doesn't encourage enough thought to interest them; it just says "we, Microsoft, think you should not install this because we said so," or it doesn't say anything. (Between the lines: "We don't like this program because its developers didn't fork over piles of cash, so, uhh, there!"). Your design fits the free software ecosystem in a better way because it demystifies the existence of people (instead of just behemoth corporations), and I bet even /real/ usability testing would find it a more natural, human approach. Less forbidding, less corporate, and it pushes the technical details of the operating system into the background where it belongs. It doesn't matter whether Jesus trusts the repository's owner or Canonical; it's up to the user and presented the same way, and it's his choice whether he trusts Canonical's judgement. (Carrying the previous example, I for one happily use Windows to play games but don't trust Microsoft's judgement for what software is good, even if they did make the OS). Preaching to the choir, of course, but it's easier that way :) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
On apturls and repositories
Sounds like the discussion at UDS about having support for adding repositories (or at least PPAs) via apturl didn't get very far. At risk of prolonging a stalemate, I get the impression blocking this idea for safety reasons is completely pointless. Someone can 'easily' add a repository to a user's system (be it maliciously or not) through the following means: * A .deb package that adds a repository to sources.list.d * A .list file (in the format of sources.list, for example) which is then automatically handled by Software Sources administration (software-properties-gtk). There is therefore no security gain in apturls not doing repositories. All it takes is a simple file that the user downloads and opens to get the same thing happening. ...is this maybe going a bit off base? There are already two methods for adding repositories and apturl doesn't strike me as the right design for listing public keys to import. (At least not without generating a horrifying abomination of a URI). And if it doesn't import public keys with some reasonable automation, it will not work for PPAs. Now, discuss :) -- Dylan McCall signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
The awesome software sources adding feature
So, I got my hands on a nice little netbook recently. I originally put Fedora on there (which does astoundingly well with boot splashes, sound and bluetooth - the upcoming Bluetooth stuff is seamless and great on the interface front, whereas Ubuntu's current doesn't seem to receive file transfers by default). Anyhow, switched back to Ubuntu since I like the idea of having exactly the same version of everything, at all times, on both computers and the Impression theme is indispensable ;) So, in getting that rolling, I copied over sources.list from my desktop to my netbook. Noticed I could open that file with Software Sources! The program promptly appeared, offering to add all those repositories to my list automatically and then refresh. That was awesome. Why haven't I seen the functionality used before? Install directions with repositories involved look completely hostile right now, but this resolves the issue perfectly. Bye, Dylan McCall signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
notify-osd: Possible solution for long queues of notifications?
Right now notify-osd, like notification-daemon before it, has one major problem that stands out above others: applications can generate many notifications such that they get a giant queue of them, blocking out any other application's notification bubbles as well. Notify-osd's composited goodness could solve the problem elegantly. Notifications from the same application should be queued, but each application should get its own independent queue. The different queues of notifications should be stacked vertically at the same time (like the confirmation bubbles at the moment), to a limit of two or three or so. Doing that means the hard-coded timer for bubbles need not be hard-coded, since they don't get in anyone's way but themselves, and while we risk there being more noise from notifications we also avoid the issue of users missing useful ones when one application is being obnoxious. Thanks, Dylan McCall signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Hardware information applet... anyone working on it?
On 4/9/09, Mackenzie Morgan wrote: > On Thursday 09 April 2009 1:18:04 pm Dylan McCall wrote: >> Following that whole "let's tidy the notification area" idea, I have the >> feeling that the biggest offenders now are the standard hardware >> applets. On my notification area right now I have Network Manager, >> Bluetooth, Battery Level, Sound and Typing Break. Only one of these is a >> notification. The others are persistent system status data that is >> necessary, often in flux, but totally irrelevant to notifications as in >> appointments and breaks. > > Er..the sound applet is a separate applet. You can remove it independently > of > the notification area. It's called "volume mixer applet" in the add/remove > applets thing. I'm using upstream's fancy new pulse-audio-friendly volume control applet (which is a notification applet); keep forgetting it isn't default ;) Bye, Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Hardware information applet... anyone working on it?
Following that whole "let's tidy the notification area" idea, I have the feeling that the biggest offenders now are the standard hardware applets. On my notification area right now I have Network Manager, Bluetooth, Battery Level, Sound and Typing Break. Only one of these is a notification. The others are persistent system status data that is necessary, often in flux, but totally irrelevant to notifications as in appointments and breaks. It would REALLY help if there was a different applet for hardware information. There, in theory, users would be able to access hardware devices connected to their computer; printers, sound (with the new-fangled gnome volume control applet), networking, power, etc. (Maybe even mounted disks?). The end result would be a completely purified notification area by default, allowing it to be used for actual notifications again. Further, this could (in theory) give users a one-stop-shop for all things physically attached to their computers so they know where to look after connecting new hardware. Perhaps a worthy target for Karmic. Is anyone doing this? (Or is there a spec I can gawk at?) Thanks, Dylan McCall signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Adding FUSA reorganizing System menu (?!) is awful
Bug #343219 (which keeps being duplicated) seems to have been vastly
misunderstood, so it may help if I start a little discussion here.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fast-user-switch-applet/+bug/343219
"Adding Fast User Switcher applet causes shut down options to disappear
from System menu"
This is a case of well-intentioned design leading to problems, because
not all design turns out to be good design. It's a neat idea, but
flawed. That is what the bug report is about. Solid reasoning in that
bug report and every comment to it so far.
To sum it up, I think stripping the shutdown and logout buttons from the
System menu when FUSA is added to the panel creates:
* A regression, as users will notice those options vanish from the
usual (logical) place and be very confused. Remember that
shutdown is a secondary function of FUSA. ("User Shutdown"
doesn't even make sense).
* A usability problem. Keyboard interaction is almost impossible
with panel applets except the menu which has the Alt-F1
shortcut.
* Another regression, as FUSA fails to duplicate the options of
System -> Shut down.
* More work, potentially a regression as FUSA uses different
strings for the shut down dialog box. (It may be too late for
that)
* Inconsistency. FUSA should trigger the same dialog we already
have for shutting down. That way it counts down the same way (in
10s for a while, to avoid distracting the user), uses the same
strings and provides the same visual cues. The normal shutdown
dialog is still triggered when the user hits the power button on
his computer, regardless of FUSA being present.
Further, upstream's shutdown menu works just fine for everyone else. Why
do you guys keep tinkering with it?
I just had my tea so I feel a bit happier after writing all of that.
Err, keep up the awesome work! :)
Dylan McCall
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GTK+ 2.16 in Jaunty?
Sorry, this sort of question gets asked all the time but at least it's a change from the "will you package Firefox 4 Alpha?" type :P So, GTK+ 2.16 was just released and there's already an app I can't compile: Epiphany 2.27! Bit of a shame when I'm running Jaunty. The release adds some new features, including a warning on the password field when the user presses caps lock, an improved file chooser and the ability to add icons to text entries. (Other really good things, too, but I shouldn't restate the release notes). Polish, basically, and lots of it. With those features, I get the strong suspicion that lots of apps will quickly come to depend on 2.16. Is it possible this will hit Jaunty by any means, or should I start installing from source? Thanks, Dylan McCall signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Keyboard layout change visual feedback. Thoughts?
> I like it. How detailed does it get regarding what layout you've switched > to? > I used to use the Keyboard Indicator Applet to switch between US and US > International. That was really annoying because it showed the same thing (a > US flag) for both...which isn't much of an indication. So would yours > specify > which US layout was in use in that case? > It gets as detailed as xkl_engine_get_groups_names. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it gives us much more than a US flag would; it just says "USA." (It usually doesn't abbreviate, though, which is nice). I should look at how the gkbd configuration tool gets those names and see if it can be borrowed. > It looks good, but I think it should also say how you can change it > back, because if you accidentily hit those keycombination you still > don't have a clue how to get back to the previous situation. Shouldn't be too hard to do that; one just needs to know how to find out what key combination X is looking for. (I somehow don't know yet, but I /think/ the keyboard plugin is the thing which tells it that information). Thanks, Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Keyboard layout change visual feedback. Thoughts?
Here is a cute little bug (and patch) I filed upstream... http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=567880 The idea is that right now changing keyboard layout via shortcut keys (Eg: Alt + Caps Lock) provides absolutely no visual feedback by default. Bad for many reasons. It's bad for people learning the system, since they can EASILY hit those keys by accident and be confused. (A very popular problem, judging by my experiences selling / supporting computers in Canada, where Windows has multiple input languages installed by default and also no feedback when they are switched between). It's also bad for people who are actually using the layout change shortcut intentionally. There are four different keyboard layouts that can be switched between at any time. How is the user supposed to know which one he has selected?! (Granted, he could add the Keyboard Indicator applet, but that isn't readily obvious). I tried to solve the problem with a simple notification bubble that appears when the keyboard layout is changed. Some work could still be done, but it's a fine proof of concept at least. What are your thoughts on this? Here a screenshot: http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3484/keyboardlayoutnotificia.jpg Is it on the right track? Suggestions, etc. would be great :) Thanks, Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Message notifier: Why a panel applet?
Hi. Hopefully a really simple thing here. Just out of curiosity, why is the new message notifier a distinct panel applet and not just a daemon that presents itself in the notification area when appropriate? Is there a specific reason for this design, or should I start loudly promoting the idea that the new message notifier should go where all other notifications go for the sake of desktop-neutrality and usability? Thanks, Dylan McCall -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.
Re: SysRQ not working. Try it in a virtual terminal and see if that works (something harmless, like Alt SysRQ M). For starters, the SysRQ / Print Screen key becomes SysRQ when Alt is being pressed. If you change the GNOME keyboard settings you could find different results. Is it possible that whether userspace is using the Alt Printscreen key combination impacts whether the kernel does the Magic SysRQ stuff? Thanks, -Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
GDM upgrade questions
Hi, I suddenly noticed the spec for upgrading GDM[1] to the awesome new version. Excellent! I've been running gdm-new from a PPA for a while now. It may not do themes, but that is easily offset by the fact that it looks like the rest of my desktop already and has really smooth animations. I could be imagining things, but the way it works seems to improve login speeds as well :) Will Jaunty be configuring the default session for GDM? The version I have in Intrepid is very simple; it just has the little battery monitor and an assistive technologies applet. For example, it would be really beneficial if the Network Manager applet and the volume control was running at the login screen. Network Manager has support for system-wide settings, for example, so having it at login makes a ton of sense. (Perhaps an onscreen keyboard would be a good idea, too). I believe in Fedora they configure GDM fairly extensively, although I can't quite remember exactly what is running in its session. Bye, Dylan McCall (On another line of thinking: This + PolicyKit opens up some neat possibilities worth pursuing. Wouldn't it be awesome if people could add a user / guest account straight from the login screen?) [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Jaunty/GdmUpgrade signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?
This discussion is hardly relevant anymore. I agree the popup explaining what the user is about to do would be a nice alternative, but this is also a completely adequate solution. I'm sure any patches for that alternative would have a good, warm and fulfilling life. Preferences? Fine; you can set your preferences in xorg.conf. (Please nobody put them in Screen Resolution for the love of the Holy Interface Guide). Too late to set preferences, it's already crashed? Any power user who would have used Ctrl Alt Backspace probably had the sense to read the Jaunty release notes, which will have said (and I for one will make sure they say this) that that key combination is disabled by default; to use the kernel-level Alt SysRQ K instead. While you're at it, get a different video driver. SysRQ doesn't work or don't have the key? That's a bug in the kernel. Please file it, or get a new keyboard. Try pressing Shift or Fn and see if that makes a difference. Would be sensible if keyboard / mouse grabs timed out after a while or required the constant responsiveness of an "is alive" callback. (Or do they?). Bye, -Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?
> I agree with this guy, have it on by default, noobs can use GUI to switch it > off. > > Else, millions of users will be doing this on first boot up: > > alt f2 > gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf > > Section "ServerFlags" > Option "DontZap" "no" > EndSection The important thing is that those millions of users actually don't mind tinkering with xorg.conf and probably do anyway. The users we are trying to help, however, Don't Know The Key Combo Exists, or that xorg.conf exists, or that they need to explicitly tell the system how to be easier to them, until it is too late. They don't want to do any extra configuration after installing the operating system. Those millions of power-users do. It astounds me how people just forget about Ubuntu's goals and aspiritions in light of this issue. It isn't doing much for user friendliness when the community of contributors is using bad names on those new users Ubuntu strives to be gentle to and then treating them like outsiders. It isn't /likely/ for someone to hit C-A-B (although it's been done once or twice by yours truly, particularly with graphics tools), but the immediate issue is that we have a key combination which, without a moment's question, eradicates one's session from existence. No session saving, no notice, no sensitivity to whether the keyboard is grabbed or another application is handling the event. It just happens no matter what. Further, it relies on common keys. Sysrq K is alright since nobody tends to use the Sys RQ key, but Ctrl and Alt are both everyday modifier keys and Backspace is a natural key for deleting stuff. We want our users to feel free exploring Ubuntu without the risk of wiping out the system (within reason, of course). Hopefully they can gain a trust of themselves and the system that way, start paying more attention to the text on the screen and learning what it all means. One thing I know is that a single catastrophic event like "tinkering led to the loss of two hour's work when I pressed Ctrl Alt Backspace" causes someone to doubt the value of that exploring. Then there's another user reliant on others for resolving all issues related to the computer. Something interesting I've learned in an Ubuntu Forums thread is that a surprising number of people who want this key combo to stay don't actually use it for its intended purpose (to reset X when it is crashed). Instead, they use it as a shortcut for logging out. Doing that is risky, messy and inadequate. Perhaps if logging out (with session saving) was mapped to Ctrl Alt Backspace we wouldn't have as many bothered users. Bye, -Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Metacity as a compositing manager
Another thing worth noting is that Ubuntu's /default/ effects via Compiz are very modest. In fact, they provide the same general features as Metacity's compositor does by default with about a quarter the standards compliance. (A stand-out example for standards compliance being the fact that GIMP's utility windows are totally dysfunctional under Compiz but work fine with Metacity). Metacity, when we filter in its elegant behaviour, is far prettier than Compiz even if it does just give us shadows and a fancy window switcher. Further, the fact is half of Compiz's effects are entirely out of scope for a window manager and rely on horrible, kludgey, unsightly workarounds. All of Metacity's effects are in scope and only exist if they're going to work consistently. Everything else, for example fancy window previews on the window list applet, can and should be implemented by the individual child applications. This is because the window manager is not the only thing capable of pretty visual effects! I think users get confused when they switch between Compiz and Metacity, because the two have profoundly different feels, and in some cases different key bindings. Metacity uses workspaces, while default Compiz uses viewports (and a different number, if I remember right). One follows the extended window manager hints spec to precision, another has quirks. Because of that, switching the window manager should not be considered standard operation. I definitely don't think it is acceptable to dump it as a prominently displayed option as if it is something user friendly to do. So, I for one strongly recommend that Ubuntu migrates back to Metacity by default. Here's another reason: One obvious next step in GNOME's evolution as a desktop environment is the more rigid integration of the window manager with everything else. For example, GNOME-Shell is based on a heavily modified Metacity. In the future a lot of cool stuff will depend on Metacity (or whatever it comes to be called later on). It would be a shame to miss it. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Pointer glide idea for Synaptics driver
It isn't /required/ to use synclient and SHMConfig; one can use the configuration in xorg.conf if he wants. For temporary fiddling, though, synclient is a nice and simple way to get the friction settings just right. The patch is a bit troublesome because some of it is in a list of variables that loves to change. Shouldn't be too tough to copy and paste it manually, since it's very little code for now. Thanks for making that package, Siegfried. Hope nobody's system explodes! :) -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Pointer glide idea for Synaptics driver
Here's a little experiment I threw together. First of all, sorry about the huge quantity of babbling. In short, you can jump to the bottom, apply the patch and say what you think. In long (with chapters :P): The background (rationale?): The mouse is a successful input technique because the physical device makes sense. It "feels" like the mouse pointer on the screen and obeys the laws of physics if someone throws it (not that anyone would do that). The important part is that the user controls the pointer directly and those motions translate accurately on screen. In the real world, the interaction here would be understandable with any similarly sized object floating through whatever surface the mouse is being used on. The touchpad (trackpad) is often accused of being a difficult input device with severe ergonomics issues. With a touchpad, everything is an indirect type of motion without any physical feedback (which is perhaps why it has been, until now, widely despised). The touchpad doesn't move; it just acts as a window through which the pointer is nudged. At the moment the pointer is a difficult object to nudge. A bit like pushing it through syrupy goo. It just doesn't move unless the user PUSHES it at all times. It doesn't make as much sense and it doesn't feel like it applies to the real world, no matter what paper-like texture the manufacturer puts over the touchpad. (They should really be using a sticky goo texture if they want it to feel consistent). I believe this can all be fixed in software, so I tried! My idea: My idea is to give the pointer a more believable, and at the same time more comfortable presence when using the touchpad. Since the device itself doesn't provide any kind of feedback, we have to assume "the pointer" is fairly light, with a small amount of friction so it can be pushed easily. This way the user can interact more naturally. Silly, but I'm sure this can all be linked to some pseudo-scientific psychology babble. It's actually a really simple hack, too. If you haven't guessed it, this is all achieved through ridiculously primitive physics; essentially that kinetic scrolling stuff everyone loves. If the finger is lifted while moving (a flicking motion), the pointer keeps moving along its path, gradually slowed by friction. Normal pointer movement still works fine since people generally stop at the end of a movement while still touching the pad, and if not are likely to click it again in a moment. Correct me if wrong, but I have seen a few instances (counting myself :P) where people unconsciously flick the touchpad and expect the pointer to be flicked... but it is not! The patch: I attached a patch. My patch is unobtrusive, mainly adding code to synaptics.c (as well as some little configuration variables elsewhere). The heavy calculations are only carried out if PointerGlide is set to 1 (enabled). By default, PointerGlide is set to 0. Maths are proof of concept stage; not optimized. (Matt Helsley on the xorg list gave me some great suggestions to make those faster). synclient has been adjusted, adding support for the new configuration variables PointerGlide, PointerGlideFriction and PointerGlideMaxSpeed. To test, you will need to apply the (attached) patch to xf86-input-synaptics, then build both the patched driver and synclient. The patch is based on the driver from xorg's Git repository on freedesktop.org, but it should work in the apt-source copy as well. (Easy enough to do it manually, too; it isn't much code). The configuration can be done via xorg.conf, but synclient makes it much more pleasant. To enable this, run "synclient PointerGlide=1". The default friction and max speed is the same as right now on my computer (biggish touchpad, 14" screen with 1280x800 resolution). The other PointerGlide options are listed if you run synclient -l and can be played with at any time. The rest: I originally submitted this as an upstream feature request + patch, but the folks there convinced me that it was a bit too crazy (and untested) of an idea for them, though it may make sense somewhere closer to a desktop... So I am posting here to explore the idea. Two things: * What do you think? (Should I just accept that this is a ridiculous concept and move on, or could it be useful? :P). Is it comfortable? Confusing? Handy? Did you need to play with the settings? * Any suggestions for how this can be done outside of the driver? It creeped me out while working on this that my insignificant modifications to a little input driver could bring down the entire session in the event of a crash. I imagine it's a major pain to maintain... so are there examples of this type of stuff being implemented at a higher level? Personally, I think this does awesome things for ergonomics and probably is saving me
Re: You lost a new Ubuntu user
Keep in mind that prompting before going online would, with the simplest solution, block the installation process and require user intevention which is absolutely against how Ubiquity should behave. Instead, there would need to be a checkbox in the final setup page to "check online for security updates while installing". Getting the UI right requires some extra effort; the fix has the potential to destroy Ubiquity's charm :) It isn't quite as simple a solution as it is a problem, although definitely in need of fixing. Bye, -Dylan McCall -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Introduction and an Idea
point both methods of getting and making content are here to stay, and that may be for the better. We do indeed have two kinds of applications: Ones that treat files as workspaces (word processors, photo editors, video converters), and ones that treat themselves as workspaces (games, photo managers, _file browsers_). What we need is a happy medium technology that allows those two kinds of applications to talk to each other more directly, not just through the VFS and the file browser widget supplied by GTK. Back to the web site example, with the fancy new world order: User goes to the web site and clicks "Browse...". Instead of a file browser, a fancy (and of course semi-transparent) content finder widget appears. It reads into the file type filters to realize that the user wants files of type image/jpeg image/png. Hy... the user's favourite applications that provide those are Cheese, GIMP, Generic File Browser, and F-Spot! The user sees a choice between those four content providers and knows that he has the photos stored in F-Spot Photo Manager (not "the folder that F-Spot Photo Manager is meant to be abstracting" as the user must think in the present). In the future he chooses F-Spot, selects the photo using the F-Spot interface he is accustomed to and is done. That would necessitate some extra work for everyone, but more in adding simple tubes than refactoring anything. Yes, this all comes back to backups at some point. We cannot expect backup tools to be user friendly until the problems inherent in file management with our user interface are tidied up, because backing up and restoring files needs a fair bit of contact with the matter. It would help the user very, very much if a file looked the same aboard the backup media (eg: from the backup restore tool) as it looks in F-Spot. That can be done by allowing a program like F-Spot to browse a photo library when the user opens it, because that program is really nothing more than a file manager. Why only use the one generic file manager when F-Spot is perfectly adequate for its own content? Indeed, this doesn't happen today, largely because the interface has been built with the generic file manager (Nautilus in our case) on top as some omnipresent super-being, when really it should be nothing more than a nice fallback. In short, everything needs to fit into the same flow of steps. For a lot of user's, their collection of files is really an assortment of libraries, each of which belongs to a different application that you can dig up from GNOME's Known Applications list. I am confident that some day the file management mess will be tidier, so the best way to help that along is by not doing anything particularly kludgey for /this/; by building something that will stretch. So there is my thought on the matter. Rather different from yours, but we certainly agree on one thing: Backup tools are nice and this is a place where we CAN innovate. Bye, -Dylan McCall PS: Now /that/ is stream of consciousness writing. Speaking of cruft... > Hello all, > > This is my first post to ubuntu-devel-discuss, but not my first posting > to a linux development list. I posted to ubuntu-devel after being > directed there, but that group is literally ubuntu developers only. > Anyway, I was heavily active on the lists in the earlier days of BusyBox > and uClibc, as well as a few other packages along those lines. Rather > than drone on, I will try to keep this post mostly business. > > I would like to discuss Brainstorm Idea #1 > (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1/) with you. I feel that backup and > restore is an extremely important topic as we move further and further > into the digital future. Media such as digital photos, home movies, > school and university work, and much more are all at risk. This is > something that many of us know too well. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Call upon The Great Spirit of 'Ubuntu'...
> I asked them for info on casper and ubiquity and never even > got a response back from them so remastersys is a complete > solo effort on my part and anything I learned about casper and > ubiquity was from reading an examining all of the scripts > involved. > Each new version they add something and it looks like the > amd64 version has even more changes. They have not been > consistent in terms of the behind the scenes stuff for the > liveCD boot since I started making remastersys. I have had to > change it slightly for every version that they come out with > and if I now have to change it specifically for amd64 compared > to i386 I'm not going to be happy - lol. Fragadelic, please do not consider a single unanswered question a sign that people would rather you go about this alone. If you look through any web forum, you will find Thousands (!) of unanswered threads. It's no different here. Sometimes the people with the best answer just aren't available. I like to think of Ubuntu as a natural diffusion of aid. If someone does not have the aid to give, he would not conjure useless information out of nowhere. If you have any issues, feel free to post here about them, or try the IRC channel. I get the feeling from this post that someone (or some people) is putting words in the community's mouth, as if you were actually told with gusto to go away. You were not, and you are still very welcome to ask questions here as you please. In fact, please do! I for one really like the idea behind this tool (although I swear there is one in the repos -- I'm probably confusing it with something else). I would love to see this tool succeed. As mentioned, you may also try IRC which is good for the simpler issues. Probably one tip to throw out there: Some people are bizarrely offended by HTML emails. To ensure maximum audience, people generally send to mailing lists as plain text. Thanks for bringing this up, Juergen; "leave no one behind" and all that feel-good stuff ;) Take care, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Drag Window from anywhere in Metacity?
Woohoo! I (sort of) figured it out and created a branch implementing this change on Launchpad. So far it's more a proof of concept than anything else. The branch is here: code.launchpad.net/~dylanmccall/metacity/drag-from-anywhere To test this, you will need to run "./src/metacity --replace" after building. I don't recommend installing this over your current Metacity. (Yet). Works beautifully for preferences dialogs. Strangely, the expected behaviour does not occur with menu bars or toolbars, which seems a bit odd. Perhaps GTK is handling the events when it doesn't need to. Everywhere else it is wonderful -- and yes, that includes the status bar in F-Spot. (Eat that, Windows Photo Gallery!). No broken functionality detected so far, but I should get in touch with the Metacity developers to make sure... At the moment, a middle click and a right click in the client area pops up the respective actions as if the area is in fact a title bar. It's kind of neat, but I think it would be better with different operations. For example, middle click could do a resize operation (dealing with the small window borders problem in a small way). I should make this a gconf option. Maybe "touch screen mode", with another added bonus being kinetic window dragging? -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Drag Window from anywhere in Metacity?
> Brushed metal windows were Carbon, I think. I'm also pretty sure what > you're saying of Cocoa is not true though. Just got a Mac user nearby > to demonstrate it, actually. You have to click in the titlebar to > move the window. Not having Alt-Click-and-move-from-anywhere is one > of my big complaints about Apple's window manager. What I'm talking about with Matchbox is very different from that. It basically lets me drag a window from any area where it is not using mouse input. That's with a normal click, not an Alt+Click. Thus, I am not reliant on the title bar to move the window and the system gets a much more consistent and physical feel. The user no longer has to arbitrarily aim at a small title bar. A similar concept to kinetic scrolling, really. It is simple, but makes the are the user must click more logical and ergonomic. With MacOS and Windows Vista, they have this sort of behaviour in some windows, but not in all. For example, one can drag Windows Media Player by the toolbar, but can not do so with Photo Gallery (even though it uses the same UI style). MacOS is of course way more consistent, but even it sometimes has a point in the UI where a window arbitrarily stops being draggable. With this behaviour being handled by the same thing that does title bar dragging, we can have it completely consistent. Bye, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Drag Window from anywhere in Metacity?
I recently noticed a really awesome feature in Matchbox. When it is set to have windows in free mode (rather than fixed), one can drag those windows from /anywhere/. As long as the widget being dragged does not handle the necessary click events itself (eg: Is a button, text box, scroll bar, etc), the event is handled by Matchbox and used to drag the window. I found that very smooth and very smart. It is quite a unique feature in the world of operating systems. Now for the question: Why is such awesome functionality currently only found in a window manager intended for PDAs? Has there been discussion of implementing this feature for Metacity? It would be particularly useful with the discussion of changing window decorators, since this would keep moving windows on Metacity's end so we never lose that functionality. Thanks, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
I encountered a horrible experience with Nautilus and GParted
Today I needed to reorganize the partitions on a MicroSD card. I found that the best solution was GParted, so pulled that open to reformat the thing. I needed to unmount its two partitions first (a FAT32 and an ext3). Okay... did that through GParted since the option was there. NOTHING Happened; Nautilus mounted the disk again "automatically". How nice of it. Unmounted through Nautilus. Now it /stayed/ unmounted. GParted got as far as deleting the partitions. Now, whenever it starts work on creating them, Nautilus decides to mount the disk again and GParted errors out. This can't be good for the partition table, and it is definitely not good for my head. Before, there was an option under Removable Drives and Media for "Mount removable drives when hot-plugged", which would have remedied this stupid problem (albeit in a user-hostile way). Nope, it isn't there any more because Nautilus has now taken over the role of mounting devices, as if drawing the desktop image, being a shell and managing files was not enough for it. In the bizarrely placed new Media tab under File Management Preferences, there is no such option. In short, I cannot find an obvious solution. Of course I can kill Nautilus, but I generally refuse to employ "geeky" solutions to these problems. GParted is a sort of a power-user tool, but this is a serious usability problem. Is there data that Nautilus should be paying attention to which says when a disk is OK to mount? How is Nautilus tracking new devices? It strikes me as totally bizarre that it will mount a device again just because it was not the program to unmount it. Actually, that behaviour seems the precise opposite of the Unix "do one thing well" philosophy since it conflicts with other applications doing anything reasonably related. (Although I suppose this isn't surprising given that file managers in general can't resist doing every file-related task under the sun). My thought is that this is a new bug in need of serious fixing before something bad happens. (Like someone relies on a deployed GNOME desktop running above a huge file server?). The reason I am not jumping at Bugzilla is because this could also do with some discussion. Is anyone else able to reproduce this? Is the current behaviour desirable in other cases? Bye, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Intuitive "Popup" Scrollbars
> Maybe scrolling itself could be sacrificed. What if we use the scroll > wheel like this: when you scroll down, actual scrolling down will > start, and will increase in speed if you keep turning the wheel. It > will only slow down, and eventually stop if you scroll up again. The > same goes for scrolling in the upward direction. Sort of like the > middle-click scroll behaviour in Windows, only without the clicking, > and using the scroll wheel instead. > > Middle-click can then continue to be used like it is used now. > > Remco We should remember that not everybody has or uses a scroll wheel and that scroll wheels are an RSI nightmare. That said, I like this thought of yours. It would solve a bit of that RSI problem, although may not fit well with every wheel out there. Keep in mind that newer mice are removing the 'clickiness' and instead going with an approach where the wheel glides very smoothly. Thus, we get a similar effect happening in two places at once. Not that this is impossible, but it would need some fiddling˙ Speaking of repetitive strain, some of the comments to that blog post caused extended sessions of face-palming. There are two groups here I must single out: -Those who say touch screens are the future, thus this is irrelevant -Those who say scroll wheels are all people need, thus scrollbars should be abolished As well as what I just said, scroll wheels are also really not that commonly used amongst general users. I see many people using the scroll bar, just as only power users really use hotkeys. (Much to our horror when waiting for some peoples' workflow...). Touch screens, on the other hand, are begging for a feature like this. The fact is, our current interfaces have a lot of scrollbars. As anyone who has encountered HP's TouchSmart PCs will realize, beneath the shiny finger-friendly interface is the old fashioned mouse and keyboard interface. Yes, it uses scrollbars and small buttons. Those scrollbars are literally unusable; the targets at top and bottom are way too small for fingers. (Looking forward to that size by units patch for GTK!). This solves the issue by essentially raising the clickable area of the scrollbar to be the entire thing. While it does conceal that page up / down functionality, I think it is a worthy sacrifice for streamlining the rest. Having too many buttons in one place causes problems, hence the scrollbar's present sad state. Not that I mind the thought of kinetic scrolling in addition. I think we are in a neat spot for that, since GTK has always used a scroll area container. In theory, it could grab unhandled mouse events to do kinetic scrolling when the user clicks on the child window. (Which, if I recall correctly, is what Matchbox does for moving windows; it can be done when the user clicks anywhere within). Suffice it to say, scrolling is a big thing and it's great that we have such a flexible UI toolkit. It would be fun to put that flexibility to the test. Bye, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Call for testing empathy
> Alexander Jones wrote: > > Voice and video, period. > > > > amen. > > whats the point of another chat client with no added functionality. Empathy is without a doubt a richer platform than Pidgin in our case. Because it is not intent on working across platforms, it can assume the presence of certain technologies like dbus and for GTK to exist in all its glory instead of relying on plugis (with their limitations) to achieve that. Also, while I am not sure 2.24 will see this, Empathy will be a very, very important part of GNOME in the future. The Empathy developers are working on a system with which a program can carry out online communication via Empathy. This means very, very easy connection and message handling both for the developer (a bit like a VFS), and especially for the user who then just has to select a contact. It makes a lot of sense to get this fitting into Ubuntu ahead of time, because the full rollout of that functionality deserves to be very quick and very significant. So... kudos to this thought, and good luck. I'll keep an eye on this :) Thanks, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Disappointed with Ubuntu Server, could be used by such a wider audience
This thread pokes quite nicely at the idea of an Ubuntu home server metapackage to complement the rest of the desktop. I think this could be a very edgy move if approached correctly. First of all, I am amongst those who think this should have nothing to do with Ubuntu Server. Now that's out of the way, how about having both a desktop and a server preconfigured to detect and talk with each other? For example, new desktop users get logins set up on the server for all services at once instead of needing to prod it with commands for six hours. The server could handle remote calendars for Evolution (a concept which I have yet to wrap my own head around), generic file storage. Maybe client side scripts could automatically request that it download software to, for example, seamlessly have Workrave integrated across all connected computers. It could keep its IP known and continually update clients on what it is, just in case Internet access is necessary, and keep track of connected clients such that it knows certain accounts on various devices to all associate with the same user account on itself. (I have a little concept bumbling along for a sort of free, distributed mesh-like DNS system that relies on trusted hosts - eg: Friends' devices. That would be cool!) As something aimed straight at the Ubuntu desktop, this could use Avahi from top to bottom to expose services and be automatically configured by scripts on clients. Maybe Nautilus could list another Place which for the server's public files. It would not be just 'vanilla Apache and PHP and MySQL for your web development convenience. I think that could be a pretty powerful thing. There is a lot of software that needs repetitive configuration, a problem which could be overcome by a server that complements Ubuntu and is entirely powered by autodetection instead of needing convoluted guides and config files. I mention that this could be edgy, because right now the non-free competition are working really hard on their online services and big screen media centres. This sort of thing for Ubuntu would be an interesting shot back, encouraging the idea of individual users owning single low-power servers like Linutop, hooked up to their routers (perhaps placed right below them, or acting as routers themselves) to centralize all that stuff. All the devices in one's possession are then working on a convenient client-server model. In contrast to the competition's centralization, this would be a single personal server that can be trusted and that can be customized, has no subscription fees and prevents the confusing dilution that occurs when one's identity spreads over hundreds of competing online services, which is bound to happen as long as we continue to use the current poorly integrated web based applications. Basically, I agree that there should be a project dedicated to a pre-configured personal server system, because that would change the entire world... but calling it Ubuntu Server would very much limit its growing room. Bye, -Dylan PS: Sorry about the illegible stream of consciousness writing. Hopefully I have at least conveyed how exciting a dead easy one-click server that integrates with Ubuntu Desktop would be. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: No "run" menu item?
> > But that's not a solution. People migrating from Windows probably will > > expect to have such a feature in the menu, not somewhere else. And I > > don't think they would search for it in the applets. > > There is a Gnome bug filed about it: > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455537 > > I've never actually seen a Windows user use it. They usually seem to > prefer hunting through the Start Menu, except when tech support tells > them to go to the Run thing and type "cmd" and hit Enter. > I agree with that thought. The Run menu makes sense in Windows because the Control Panel is impossibly huge, and I doubt even its developers remember where things are in there -- or what is and is not present. The option to turn on auto logon in Windows Vista, as I recently learned, is no longer in the Control Panel; the appropriate graphical tool to configure that is accessed by an obscure command typed into the Run dialog. I understand that msconfig is in there somewhere, but I have strong doubts that any mortal has ever found it. It is probably easier to mash the keyboard until "msconfig" comes out than it is to find that thing in Redmond's disaster of a configuration system. On the other hand, I do not encounter people using the Run Application dialog very often because GNOME's configuration system is tidily organized. It takes very few clicks to get to anything in there, from the startup processes to the language settings. Furthermore, it can all be accessed immediately from the System menu. Typing an obscure command to open a program that should be helpful is not good interface design. I think by adding a Run menu, that particular malpractice would be unhappily encouraged, as seems to have occurred with Windows. I like to think that this is not about making things easy for tech support, but making tech support unnecessary. It should also be pointed out that the .desktop standard has the effect that everything which calls itself an "application" (the usr/share/applications kind) appears in the menu. Anything that doesn't call itself an application is doing it wrong or not meant to be found. I do not believe our command-line-loving competitors have any similar system in place. My favourite use for the Run Application dialog is to create launchers. (Which is pretty cool. Just type a command, then drag the icon!). I suppose that hints at its scope: It serves to speed things up for geeks who are excited whenever another GTK widget becomes drag & droppable and who are sensitive to the extra time it takes to launch a terminal. It is an extra fast launcher, rewarding to those who remember the paths to programs they use. (One extra hotkey isn't a problem for those types). I would be disappointed if it needed to become more than that. Bye, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
A better media player (was Re: Banshee by default in Intrepid)
> At UDS, we actually looked hard at the experience of Music players and > playing - and both Banshee and Rhythmbox fared very badly, and we were > quite rude about both of them ;) > > The Banshee authors got a list via Jorge Castro, and Rhythmbox authors > will be getting lots of bugs filed for them. > > Banshee needs to be demonstrably _better_ than Rhythmbox, right now it's > only merely different. > > Scott Judy out of curiosity, what were those which made it so low ranked? One thing off the top of my head is that playing podcasts is a different interface from playing other media. I can understand downloading them being in its own place, and even there being a shortcut to play downloaded items from the podcast download section, but in no media player I have encountered do downloaded podcasts simply appear in the same place as the rest of my media. What if, for example, I really like 60 Second Science and want those clips randomly placed in between my music? --Can't do, unless I manually drag and drop from Podcasts to Music Library. This is a similar foolishness to expecting the user to know that History in a web browser is displayed in the sidebar, thus to go to the View -> Sidebar menu to open that information. The user should not have to care how the media came to be; all he should have to think about is the media itself. Isn't that the point of media management software? Not sure if a list of problems already exists, but if not it would be useful to create one. There are definitely some problems in the design these programs follow, and since both Rhythmbox and Banshee are remarkably active projects I am sure some imaginative solutions could be developed. Bye, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: making deals with M$
> > > > We kid him about using Vista on IRC, but he devotes countless hours to free > > software development. > > > > Who the heck are you and what have you done for FOSS lately except engage in > > random ad hominem attacks on people who are busy actually getting work done? > > just because I'm not a programmer doesn't mean my opinion isn't worth > as much or more than yours (I'm clearly better informed about these > issues having read boycottnovell and having discussed issues with Roy > himself). > > As far as Richard Johnson being a core-dev, sounds pretty scary that > you let someone so in love with Microvell to contaminate Ubuntu. > I feel I should jump in here and point out that being well informed does not involve reading a single web site, be it in complete detail or not. I doubt anyone would disagree that BoycottNovell is an extremely one-sided argument with a clear goal in mind. Not that I have anything against one-sided arguments - in fact, I prefer them. People are better at arguing points they accept; leave the counterpoint to someone else. The ideal situation is that people see all corners of the argument while also accepting that being far off to one side does not work in reality. Saying that you have read BoycottNovell in detail as your specific claim to understanding tells me one thing: That you understand one single side of the issue; you do not undersand the issue in general. If I may be so blunt, I think your earlier assertion that free open source software /can/ be "destroyed" (and further that Miguel De Icaza, in his odd little wanderings, can cause such a thing) shows that you have stuff to learn about this ecosystem. I won't claim to be an open source know-it-all, but I think it is important to realize how interconnected this all is. Just because one distribution wants to license some software to improve the experience for the end user does not magically damage the efforts upstream, in another distro or even downstream. It may change that particular distro, but there is enough padding from the modularity of all this that there is not a shockwave. Actually, rather than bumbling on trying to say that, I will simply challenge your point: Please explain, with realistic examples, how Ubuntu Notebook Remix using licensed proprietary software for the sake of market viability will aversely affect the core of Ubuntu and Ubuntu's contributors. Furthermore, please explain how this ripples outwards and destroys GNOME, which is contributed to in part by Ubuntu but also by numerous other distributions and individuals. How about the Linux kernel and the free software foundation? I would be interested to know what strange weakness you have discovered, because that sounds like a serious flaw. Thanks, -Dylan McCall PS: The incredible use of dollar signs for this discussion is seriously hurting my head. Not sure if it is the facepalming or something prior to that, but may it please stop? The S key is easier to press anyway. PPS: I have not seen the world explode yet. In fact, I have seen Linux operating systems like Ubuntu surge in popularity this year. What disaster was Microsoft + Novell meant to cause, again? PPPS: It should also be pointed out that Ubuntu is not unknown to have proprietary bits and pieces. For example, a great deal of the promotional material, including case study PDFs and fancy web site graphics, lack source and are contracted to outside firms. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Weird downstream Power Manager changes?
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 16:33 +0200, Oliver Grawert wrote: > hi, > Am Dienstag, den 03.06.2008, 07:21 -0700 schrieb Dylan McCall: > > Power Management Preferences has been needlessly crippled. The sliders > > to control when the computer sleeps and when the display sleeps all have > > a lower limit of "21 minutes". > do you have gnome-screensaver installed ? thats no "downstream patching" > thats the default behavior if gnome-screenasver has a 20min limit set we > never touched that area of either gss or gpm. > > ciao > oli > Aha! Sorry about the double post. Just realized that the minimum is idle time + 1 minute, which probably makes sense somewhere. (Except for the 1 minute part?!). Still, the fact that this basic setting of timers needed research to figure out suggests a need for some reorganizing. Firstly, idle time should be set in gnome-power-preferences, not just gnome-screensaver-preferences, if it has such a widespread impact. Furthermore, I think it is problematic that the idle time cannot be set differently for when on battery as opposed to when on AC power, again because of its tie to screensaver time. Perhaps this would make more sense if idle did not automatically trigger the screensaver, instead with another timer to handle that. Come to think of it, I am also a little confused by what "idle" means here. There is "dim display when idle", which seems to have an opinion of its own for when idle is, dimming the screen after what seems a few seconds of inactivity. It does not wait for the idle time that everything else seems to be tethered to. This is all assuming "idle time + 1" actually makes sense infrastructure-wise. I am assuming here that we somehow need gnome-screensaver to trigger these actions. If not, what of use does "idle" do, anyway, other than control the controls? Bye, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Weird downstream Power Manager changes?
> do you have gnome-screensaver installed ? thats no "downstream patching" > thats the default behavior if gnome-screenasver has a 20min limit set we > never touched that area of either gss or gpm. Hrm, could have sworn I saw that in vanilla GNOME. Thanks, Oliver. Good thing I didn't file a bug yet, then! (And to clarify, just in case, I am looking at gnome-power-preferences). Bye, -Dylan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Weird downstream Power Manager changes?
John Williams' blog post [1] about the horrible usability breakage in the "Computer failed to suspend" popup reminded me of some other downstream changes to GNOME Power Manager that appear, frankly, to have been done entirely as busy work and do absolutely nothing for usability. Power Management Preferences has been needlessly crippled. The sliders to control when the computer sleeps and when the display sleeps all have a lower limit of "21 minutes". How is that in any way power saving if the display stays on for 21 minutes before switching off while on battery? In base GNOME, there is no such bottom limit; the user is given full control. If anything, the extra control is healthy for usability. That bottom limit confused me and, if I ran on battery more often, would have had me on a very long quest for answers. I guess the point of this writing is as follows: What's with the change? Bye, -Dylan M [1] http://gnomerocksmyworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/rtfm.html signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: The new firefox start page looks a bit tricky when searching google
> 2) country seems to be set to "UK", which can explain (1) but I don't > like this behaviour especially because it breaks usability for non-UK > users and creates confusion Oh, that is pretty ugly :o > 4) the obtained page does not have the standard google look and feel (in > particular there is no top bar with google images etc.) The obtained page is actually a Google Custom Search. I think it's ideal here since it gives us control over the results page. The only problem is that it looks /too much/ like Google! I think it would be quite nice to have it themed like the start page :) > 5) there already is the search engine input field, and the focus is > shifted without conditions to the page field only after loading the > ubuntu page, which is rather irritating because you may already be > typing then. In default firefox setup, we seem to have a duplicate > functionality (the two search boxes) and, even worse, results > are /slightly/ different! Use a different browser, then :P You are right, it's a tad odd. I think an ideal fix would be for that to lead us to an Ubuntu-related search, but that could also fool / confuse people. Bye, -Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: An example of how things should *not* be done
Ideally, couldn't the install script for xserver-input-wacom add the necessary stuff to xorg.conf itself? I imagine that would lead to really ugly xorg configuration files, though, as we see with the old Screens & Graphics tool. I guess what we need is a magical, open-ended and centralized tool for configuring xorg.conf that everyone (including the end user) uses. Would help if this wasn't a single big file... Bye, -Dylan On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 3:20 PM, Vincenzo Ciancia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Please anybody, don't take this e-mail personally. I just want to point > out an example where a not-so-well-tought decision has caused troubles > to a niche of users who are too few to get listened to. I love you all > and hardy is really pretty. I report this story here just because I > think it has something to teach to every ubuntu developer. > > Regarding the wacom enabled/disabled by default issues, by googling > better, I found the culprit: > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wacom-tools/+bug/42553 > > The funny thing is that the title is the same as the one of my previous > thread in this mailing list, replacing "disabled" with "enabled" by > default! > > A lot of people wanted it disabled because kde applications gave errors > at startup, and the log file in their home directory became huge. This > is a very good reason, and having the configuration in xorg was really > strange given that few people have tablet PCs. > > Then, Bryce Harrington posted on the bug report more or less the same > patch to dexconf that I posted here: > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/188787 > > and then Bryce himself *disabled* wacom setup *without* using his own > patch to conditionally re-enable the setup in xorg > whenever /dev/input/wacom exists. I can't know why. My patch could have > been Bryce's patch since 2007-06-13, and wacom would have been not > broken in gutsy. > > There is no apparent reason for this choice, that was just a quick > decision to close the bug. In one of the comments therein I even read > "how many people use tabletPCs with ubuntu anyway?" - enough it seems to > have some 30 subscribers for this long standing issue that was closed in > feisty: > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wacom-tools/+bug/40473 > > In any case, have a good night and a good release, and thanks for the > overall very good work from release to release. It seems that I can give > an ubuntu cd to everybody and make them happy (I am known as the ubuntu > guy in my department and everybody talks to me about how beatiful they > find their new ubuntu and thank me for helping them in set up), but I am > doomed to see my own laptop more and more broken in new releases it > seems :) > > Vincenzo > > > > -- > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss > -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: gnome-panel and Fitt's law?
No such issue here with up to date Hardy. The one spot which doesn't obey Fitt's law for me is the notification area, which seems to be creating a small border around the icons it holds. All other applets, with a few rare exceptions, are clickable from the very edge of the screen. The one exceptions I have noticed myself is Seahorse's Encrypt / Sign clipboard applet. My panel is at the top of the screen. Perhaps this changes weirdly depending on orientation? Bye, -Dylan I am using Metacity, with compositing turned on. Possibly a Compiz issue? On Mon, 2008-03-31 at 19:08 +0200, Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote: > What's up on this topic? The bug report [1] says it's been fixed in > Hardy, but I'm using compiz-fusion-plugins-main 0.7.2-0ubuntu1, and I'm > still getting this issue (I guess it's the same, not being able to > activate e.g the Applications menu from the very top of the screen). Is > anyone experiencing the same? > signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Miro (Re: New Programs for Hardy?)
Miro is a wonderful idea, and the Miro guide is an excellent web site, but the program itself is a painfully bloated (and buggy) pig. The word "refactor" echoes in the back of my mind every time I use it -- which is very often, because it's still an excellent concept! Alas, it should definitely not have hit 1.0 until the program stopped creating duplicate entries for torrent downloads, and allowed for Miro channels to change their feed URL on the fly. (As it is, since the Google Tech Talks location changed, the channel is broken for every past subscriber). The front end could also use some more imagination. Possibly a bigger division between front and back ends would do the program well. I, for one, would love to navigate my Miro library with Elisa, for example, while still having a daemon (or something!) download my stuff in the background. At the moment, it is laid out just like an RSS feed reader with pictures, which defeats the purpose entirely. The only reason I really use Miro over an RSS reader, is because it integrates with that fancy guide web site. A problem right now is that opening a channel tends to take a few seconds (even on a 2.2 gHz Intel Core 2 Duo), yet that is the only way at the moment to list downloaded shows in categories. The interface has me thinking way too much about RSS feeds, what it should be downloading, wondering where things are and why one download that I thought I deleted a month ago keeps reappearing. As for the good part... check out the Google Tech Talks and TED channels. Googletechtalks is just an RSS feed of YouTube, but it is really nice and easy to get those through Miro since YouTube conceals their RSS subscribe buttons so that it takes ages to find them. Thanks to the Miro guide, things like that are really quickly discoverable, which is one of the things that makes TV such an intuitive experience; when people flip channels, they may find interest in shows they had no idea existed! Unfortunately, the guide still necessitates direct searching, but areas like the Popular Channels list help greatly. There is even a Yoga channel, if I remember rightly. Miro is looking to do for TV what the Internet is doing for text-based and interactive entertainment: Bringing the work, (and therefore the profits), closer to the content creators. This means less shady business practises, fewer businesses who base their entire profit model on luck and / or messing with their customers (*Cough* Retail), more open content, and - most importantly - less expensive content. A program like Miro (or really just the Internet TV idea in general) makes broadcast easier and more accessible than through a big TV network. This may take a while, as people are still very much hooked to the big / evil networks like Fox, but there is nothing to lose - only things to gain from the (potentially) infinitely superior infrastructure (when Miro loses its bugs). Internet services are the new medium for broadcast of content, and they have proven their worth in durability, flexibility and generally low cost. There are already some Internet radio channels that blast their analog broadcast competition out of the water, and online news sites are far easier to deal with than newspapers since they only consume space and time when you tell them to (ie: They have something interesting). Search engines like Google can integrate beautifully with all this stuff because every server talks in the same way, no matter what its owners are broadcasting. Internet TV is going to happen. ...Anyway, Miro is a fantastic program, but not ready for default. Yet. I do agree, however, that it may be a neat idea in the future :) Bye, --Dylan McCall PS: In my opinion, naturally. On Sat, Feb 9, 2008 at 6:45 AM, Vadim Peretokin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Miro is a great program, but it was *barely* working on my 1.5Ghz, 512ram > laptop. Pretty much unusable. So, it wouldn't really fit the min ubuntu > requirements and make some people unhappy. Not necessary... > > > On Feb 9, 2008 10:29 AM, Vincenzo Ciancia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On 09/02/2008 Conrad Knauer wrote: > > > Apologies; I meant to ask: 'If Miro can't be added to the default > > > Hardy install (e.g. added to ubuntu-desktop), would it be possible for > > > Hardy+1?' > > > > I personally love miro but can't still recommend it to my friends since > > it really crashes a lot on ubuntu. Including such an application on the > > default cd would,in my opinion, be not-so-good publicity for ubuntu. > > > > Vincenzo > > > > -- > > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss > > > > > -- > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > Ubu
Re: Speakers and sound configuration tool
I have one suggestion for this suggestion: The user should have some means of testing his setup. It can be quite difficult to be certain when a surround sound setup is actually plugged in correctly, and playing random sounds is not always helpful. I think one powerful possibility would be a test system with a spinning dot that emits a sound, possibly following the mouse pointer. This way, the user has control over where the sound is coming from as well as the ability to test how well in-between sounds (coming from multiple speakers at once) work. Another thing needing some audio feedback is the balance adjustment, which should really have a light humming noise as it is adjusted in order to find the perfect spot, but I suppose that would be the volume control's problem. Anyway, you can ignore my unimaginative suggestions. Basically, need speaker tester :) Bye, -Dylan McCall On Mon, Feb 4, 2008 at 8:45 PM, Piotr Zaryk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm sure it's too late for Hardy. It's an LTS and new, unstable features > are not welcome. Yes, I think we should make it for the next release. Please > edit the feature description on the ubuntu wiki if you have got some ideas. > > 2008/2/4, Evan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > > I like the look of this, but it's probably too late to make it to Hardy. > > Maybe Hardy+1? > > > > On 2/4/08, Thomas Novin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 16:37 +0100, Piotr Zaryk wrote: > > > > What do you think about it? > > > > > > > > > > > > > Really nice idea and initiative! I went crazy trying to get SP/DIF > > > working with my AC'97 sound card through asoundrc-configuration. I > > > actually never got it working perfectly since I could only play from > > > one > > > source at a time. To be able to solve this via a simple gui would be > > > heaven. > > > > > > Rgds, > > > > > > Thomas > > > > > > > > > > > -- > Regards, > Piotr Zaryk > -- > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss > > -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
