Helping out with XFce 4 [Was: Re: Can we release 3.8.18?]

[Jasper Huijsmans]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 00:15:34 +0200
Xavier MAILLARD <zedek at fxgsproject.org> wrote:

[...]

Xavier, are you subscribed to xfce4 mailing list? I thought it would be
more fitting there.

> 
> I will be interested in helping developping the project. But I need to
> have a doc axplaining the API etc.. I also need to read a little (sic)
> of the source code to familiarize myself with it :)
> 
> But I am very interesting in doing something (even small).
> 

Right, first of all thanks for offering to help out. Secondly, it's not
easy for me to tell you what you should do.

That would require me to know what should be done and honestly I don't.
The basic idea is there, but it's probably a bit fragile still (easy to
break).

There's no real documentation, but I tried to give some information in
the README. Also there are many comments in the code, which hopefully
makes it easy to read.

If you don't know gtk yet it's probably best to search the net for
tutorials on that. The API reference also contains a lot of information.

I'm now working at implementing a new size (Tiny), but this is not in
CVS yet.

A small thing that can be done is port the clock from xfce3 to GTK2 and
pango. I have something here, which I can send you if you want. I don't
know how difficult it would be to make the clock plugin use this.

Another thing I would like to change is have the module configuration
(e.g. the mail checker) save configuration specific to its position, so
you can have more mail checkers with different configurations.

Of course, the XFce Desktop Environment is more than the panel and the
window manager. There many things still missing at the moment. I'm
hoping Olivier might have some ideas on this as well.

A short list of what comes to mind:

o session management; xfce3 has one has one of the best implementations
  of session management.
o xfwm4 configuration dialog; I just found out you can send a HUP signal
  to xfwm4 to make it reread its configuration.
o gtk configuration (based on XSETTINGS from freedesktop.org) like the
  palette tabfolder in the current setup dialog plus font.
o root menu; there is a program called deskmenu that was written by the
  author of Oroborus on which xfwm4 is based. Maybe this can easily be
  ported to GTK2.
o taskbar; I don't know if Marcin is working on a GTK2 port, but this is
  a must have if we want people to switch from xfce3. This must use the
  window manager hints defined on freedesktop.org.
o xfsound, also based on window manager hints. I portred the GUI, but
  not the backend.
o minimized app icons; this is related to the taskbar. ROX Filer can do
  this now, but I don't know if we want to rely on ROX for this
  functionality.

There's probably more... Any opinions from other people? Olivier,
Edscott?

> Cheers,
> 
> zeDek
> 
> P.S: do not hesitate to contact me by mail to assign me tasks and
> giving
>      me write access onto the CVS.
> 

For write access you need a sourceforge account and than ask Olivier to
give you access. You can check out from CVS anonymously.

greetings,
	Jasper