The "GNOME Wishlist"

So the every amusing OSNews is running a GNOME Wishlist. Sigh. Where do I start?

Nautilus Scripts/Addons

Nautilus 2.6 will support funky new plugins, with a clean API and decent menu merging. I though Eugenia was keeping up with Nautilus development, she certainly posts on nautilus-list now and again.

Spatial Mode

It's not finished -- either help make it totally rock by commenting/fixing/patching, or wait until is it finished.

Metacity Features

The standard rant about "viewports" and "workspaces". Again. Jesus people, ask for a feature and not the name for a subset of available features that you have used before. Please. I'm about to ask God to extend his kitten-killing to Metacity... For glueing windows to the corner of the screen... well, press shift once you are close to the corner and it will magically glue itself, without snapping to the windows it sees en route.

File Selector

Eugenia's comments are pretty useless: "...is pretty bad". Not really a comprehensive UI review, but thanks anyway. But that's not what I'm confused about -- I'm confused about the number of people who think that the "Frobnicate this file" check box in Frederico's example screenshot is part of the default UI! Please engage brain before posting. What would "frobnicating" do to a document I opened in gedit? In galeon? Did you ever consider the possibility that this widget is an example of an extra widget the developer can add to the file selector?

Volume and Showdesktop Icons

Honestly, compared against some of the bugs in GNOME this is laughable. Extract the patch from Red Hat, and file it as a bug upstream. It will probably be applied. Not Hard Work.

Development Tools

"Glade is junk, end of story" -- Eugenia. Right. Personally I consider Glade to be a wonderful interface designer, and makes coding GTK+ interfaces trivial. I hope this isn't referring to the "Generate Source" button in Glade, which is generally considered to be A Bad Idea when using C.

Personally, I hope that Eclipse's C support will mature and someone integrates Glade somehow, even if it is just a button to launch the binary. But I'm happy with Glade + libglade + xemacs.

Copy/Paste still misbehaves after all these years

File bugs! There is no fundamental reason why copy and paste shouldn't work, as is shown by the recent gaim hacking to copy right text to/from the gaim chat window into the Evolution composer.

GConf Editor

A search button for gconf-editor could be handy, but generally tried looking in /apps/[app-name]?

Samba on Nautilus

GNOME 2.4 I believe had a new smb: implementation, and in GNOME 2.6 it will rock even more.

Rhythmbox and Totem

"Use the XMMS visualization plugins" -- not possible. It is impossible to link GTK+ 1.2 and GTK+ 2.x code in the same binary.

"Totem ... use either Gstreamer or Xine on the fly" -- why? I'd say that everything GStreamer can play, Xine can play. If you want a player for everything, use Xine. In the future when GStreamer has the required features, we'll all be able to switch over to that instead.

"I would like Totem to recognize the file format and show an alert to the user "would you like to download from the web these formats and install them?" -- Totem already does this when it can, and has done so for a long time.

Epiphany

The usual minor issues which get blown out of all proportion as show-stopping bugs for the entire desktop. File a bug, create a patch, do something!

Text and Video Messaging Integration

I think the gnomemeeting maintainer covered this one...

Burning Application

GNOME the desktop is going towards tools to help end-users. Thus we have nautilus-cd-burner which is wonderful for the very common task of "burn these files". I have a patch (honest, I do) for Rhythmbox which lets that burn audio CDs from playlists. I don't see the need for a fully-featured 100% coverage CD burning tool in the GNOME desktop.

14:44 Wednesday, 10 Dec 2003 [#] [computers] (20 comments)

Posted by Andy at Wed Dec 10 15:07:55 2003:
>> "I would like Totem to recognize the file format >>and show an alert to the user "would you like to >>download from the web these formats and install >>them?"

>-- Totem already does this when it can, and has >done so for a long time.

No, it has not. It has shown a dialog saying that it does not have a plugin to handle the format in question, but it has NOT offered any link to where to get the plugin.
Posted by Ross at Wed Dec 10 16:05:41 2003:
Well it has for me.

Bastien, who wrote Totem, says you need curl installed and to be running on Intel, with the Xine version of Totem. Then it will try to download the codec.  The GStreamer version of totem does not allow this, as gstreamer doesn't reveal the FOURCC to Totem, and GStreamer can't use win32 codecs.
Posted by Andy at Wed Dec 10 17:42:58 2003:
Thanks for the information. I run the xine backend and I'm on x86, so the only thing I didn't have was curl. I installed it, but still no go. I will download the source and see if you can compile against curl somehow. If so, I'll tell Debian's maintainer about this.
Posted by Jordi at Wed Dec 10 17:50:52 2003:
Heh, nice one Ross!
Posted by Andy at Wed Dec 10 17:56:51 2003:
>I don't see the need for a fully-featured 100% coverage CD burning tool in the GNOME desktop.

It doesn't need to be distributed with the GNOME desktop, but there's no question what so ever that there is a huge demand for a full-fledged GNOME burning application. People don't like XCDRoast. Really.
Posted by Andy at Wed Dec 10 21:15:47 2003:
Andy, re CD burning.  I know.  The article was talking about "The GNOME Desktop" which means shipped, supported software.  A fully-featured CD burning application is about as relevant to the "desktop" as a video editing application... oh Eugenia thinks Novell should buy another company and fix that too doesn't she...

Some people don't seem to be able to tell the difference between the "desktop" and "the apps I want".  I want a powerful text editor, a compiler, and a local IMAP server. The GNOME desktop doesn't need to provide these. It provides simple but capable text editors and easy to use tools.  Powertools are not part of GNOME Desktop.
Posted by GNOME fan! at Wed Dec 10 21:31:03 2003:
hey...
KDE have Kate y Kwrite...

GNOME have .... mmmm..... Gedit?
is that really the best text editor that GNOME can provide?

yes ! yes! we have vim and Emacs... but i want something using GTK+ 2.x !!!!
If you do a skin of GTK+ 2.x for EMACS (like there is one for OOo... i'll be very happy!)

or improve Gedit ! or start a new project... but i want a really kick ass text editor using GTK+ 2.x !!!
Posted by Ploum at Wed Dec 10 22:18:04 2003:
I think that geek people must listen to end user instead of talking between geeks.

And yes, often, people don't make any difference between "a good and powerful desktop" and "the apps I want to use".  I perfectly agree with Andy.

I try personnaly to listen to end users...  And, if I don't code anything for Gnome, I try to contribute this feedback. (clic on my name for the text)
Posted by Ploum at Wed Dec 10 22:19:09 2003:
Gnome fan! > gvim use gtk2 ;-)
Posted by Paul Gnuyen at Wed Dec 10 22:36:21 2003:
Ok, ask for features.  I want to be able t o drag my window between one "viewport" and another so half of it's on one and half of it's on the other.  With a multiple monitor setup, I'd like to be able to have say 6 virtual screens and toggle between the modes of having visible screen 1 and screen 2, screen 3 and screen 4,  screen 4 and screen 5 etc, having it all one big long desktop which i can have windows span all 6.
Posted by Eugenia at Wed Dec 10 22:58:46 2003:
Most of your reactions on my points were something like this: "File a bug, create a patch, do something!". He doesn't seem to realize that when you create software that others can use  (freely or not) this immediately can become the subject of an evaluation. My "job" at osnews is not to patch or "do something". It is to write reviews, editorials etc. It is like saying that all these movie critics should just grab and camera or write a better script rather than bitching about how a movie sucked or ruled. Sorry, but real life is not like that. (Un)fortunately for you, I do OSNews, the #2 Linux-related news site on the web (traffic-wise) behind Slashdot. We serve more than 4.2 million impressions per month (real web pages, not hits) and so it is our 'duty' to write reviews or publish any other such material that might interest our readers. That particular article was an editorial, a personal wish list based on my experience with Gnome all these years. I do file bugs from time to time, but I have absolutely no desire to create patches or write code for Gnome. I have development experience (mostly with BeOS and some with OSX), but I just don't feel like going back to it (well, I do some C# in my free time these days). If a well known Gnome dev like you ask from users to write code, then Gnome is still not ready for prime time business-wise. Linux is not the 1000-user project anymore. It is a large scale project and so it is Gnome. What bothers me is your attitude towards GNOME consumers, users and journalists, whose numbers are growing very fast: expect more people bitching about little or big things that until yesterday we would have considered as "WONTFIX". It is the price to pay for success. It is part of the game. I wouldn't have written such an article for Fluxbox for example, cause Fluxbox doesn't ultimately matter. Gnome or KDE do though.


I had another note in the beginning of my article (which my first proof reader took it out as it was too "banal", she said), explaining why I was writing it:

"I dare because I care".

Thankfully, the comments on my article were pretty positive towards my list and that was a good thing. But still, many people get stuff I write the wrong way anyway, they think there is an inherit "hatred" towards some things, which is just not true. I am just hard to please: I like polished, mature, interoperative, easy to use and well done stuff in order to "buy in" as a consumer of either free or not products/projects. What I use as a consumer, I need them to be of top notch quality: from organic vegetables to non-allergic lipsticks, to software that successfully solves my problems. If they are f/Free or not, it doesn't really matter for me, as long as they do the job as I expected them to.

I am a practical person down to my bones, I despise politicians like cats despise water. I use computers to solve problems. If they do it well, I congratulate them and give them high marks. If they don't do what I need, I look elsewhere (and write articles as that's my 'job' to do ;). There is no "evil Eugenia" anywhere, it is just "Eugenia, wearing the hat of the average consumer". I hope this explains where I stand, Ross. Please email me back if you have any questions.

Eugenia
Posted by Michael at Wed Dec 10 23:12:37 2003:
Thanks Ross.
Posted by Ploum at Wed Dec 10 23:32:29 2003:
I must agree with Eugenia here : Gnome must become a commercial software. Bountiers are really great in this kind of way...
Posted by Eugenia at Wed Dec 10 23:38:16 2003:
>Gnome must become a commercial software.

I NEVER said that Gnome should become commercial software! Please don't put words in my mouth I never said. :o :o

What I said was that average consumers (99% of the planet's population) don't care if something is open source or not. They only care about what they can do with it, how it can improve their lives. That's what matters in any offering, gift or product. For example, even if you are offered a gift by a good friend, if it is not do what you need, at the end of the day you will go out shopping for something that does what you need. You won't try to "patch" your friend's gift or try to live with less. You will end up going out shopping instead. That was my point.
Posted by Ploum at Thu Dec 11 00:12:49 2003:
My english is bad.. sorry !

I want to say that gnome must have (and it has already) a commercial quality ! 

I really think that OpenSource must take care of some commercial aproach (for advertizing his products for example). I really don't like it since I'm a bit anarcho-idealist, but, well...  I see that most people are afraid when you see Linux because "it's for communist" (not a joke ! I hear that !)

By commercial approach, I say things like a cool wallpaper by default, a simple but eye-candy theme, a good and informative website, ...

Yes, I can change myself my wallpaper... but it's more commercial to have this really cool but simple Gnome branding wallpaper. (it's only an example)
Posted by Stephen Norris at Thu Dec 11 03:26:27 2003:
I hope we never get to the stage where Gnome is only as good as commercial software!
Posted by Jeff Waugh at Thu Dec 11 05:43:52 2003:
Remember that 'commercial software' is not the same thing as 'proprietary software'. GNOME, in my mind, is increasingly and very successfully 'commercial software'. Consider Red Hat, Sun and Ximian's use of GNOME when you think about this.
Posted by Sean Harshbarger at Thu Dec 11 06:40:31 2003:
I just love how they "think" my project coaster is dead when we just moved our libburn to freedesktop. Granted the site is out of date, but I blame sf.net for most of this since their shell has not worked for me in some time even after a few emails.
Posted by Robert Renling at Thu Dec 11 11:45:31 2003:
GNOME doesn't need to do anything, people with legitimate concerns about issues revolving around GNOME are free to take them up, discuss it with the rest of the people, conceptual development and then show why it should be like that.

Although, I can see how people fail to relate to the "Doer" philosophy inherent in open source development and just descend into a condescending nag about how they feel it should be, just because that person feels that he/she/it can't relate to the functionset.

I'll be the first person to admit that it would be nice to have more applications for GNOME, I rest safely knowing that it will be there, if not, I will help to ensure that it will eventually be there in one way or the other.

so to the larts, please, relax, make a gourmet dish and sit down, open up a bottle of a good Prosecco and enjoy, there's more to life than GNOME.
Posted by suonerie at Tue Mar 16 16:37:36 2004:
beautiful post.

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