Feature requests and bugs. (a lot of)

[Jasper Huijsmans]

hmm,

perhaps it's me, perhaps this time I'm the one with a bad mood like
Olivier before, but somehow these emails leave me feeling slightly
annoyed. I'm quite sure it's my problem ...

On Sat, 8 Mar 2003 14:54:49 -0700
Rob Park <rbpark at ualberta.ca> wrote:

> I have some suggestions, too ;)
> 
> Alas! Väinö Järvelä spake thus:
> > - File context menu should be restructured in XFFM. File operations
> >   should be the default menu under the cursor when you popup the
> >   menu. And please, add remove/delete in the menu.
> 
> Yes! I want to be able to delete files with XFFM, not just copy and
> rename them ;)
> 
> What's the point of the trashcan feature if there's no way to put
> files into it? (at least, none that I can see).
> 

So, you think this is intended behaviour then? Or might it be the case
this this has simply not been implemented yet? 

> > - Lock-screen should popup if there is no xscreensaver or xlock.
> 
> Yeah, that's a good idea. Not everybody has xscreensaver installed ;)
> 

Of course they have. Everybody has xscreensaver installed and/or xlock.
The tiny percentage of people who haven't may be expected to find out
that xflock4 is just a shell script and they can modify it to suit their
purposes.

> Also, perhaps the Setup menu can have a "module" for launching
> xscreensaver-demo? It seems logical that the place to go to configure
> stuff would have a way to configure the screensaver.
> 

There's lots of things you can't configure from there, so no. The
xscreensaver author is free to write such a plugin though (or someone
else ...).


> > Feature requests:
> > - Mailcheck panel-item should have support for Maildir format. Maybe
> > a
> >   way to check multiple mailboxes/maildirs. And how about using fam
> >   to check for new mail?
> 
> I'd especially like to see support for multiple mbox files for it to
> check:
> 
> $ ls ~/mail/|wc -l
> 23
> 
> ;)
> 
> I'd also like to see it have a configurable tooltip, like the other
> launch buttons do. Simply having it print the command as the tooltip
> is not cool, the tooltip "Xterm -e mutt" is ugly as sin ;)
> 
> I'd like the tooltip to tell me how many new messages there are. That
> would be nice ;)
> 

Well, I'm not going to do it, but why don't you try. I'd be happy to
take patches. You can copy code from other people (e.g. gkrellm) so this
is _exactly_ the kind of thing someone with a little coding skill and a
little time could contribute.

> > - Option to have no popup-buttons but to press and hold item to
> > popup
> >   the menu.

hmm, not obvious at all to me, but interesting. And I would only add it
as replacement not as an option. (Apple probably has a patent on this
too ;-)

> > - Maybe not show popup-buttons at all if there are nothing to popup
> > to.
> 

This would also require a way to add sub-panels. This is something I
would consider. 

> The launcher sub-menus (whatever you call the things that pop up when
> you click on the triangles on the panel) should be more "transient".
> This means that if you click to open them, clicking elsewhere should
> close them. As it stands now, I sometimes click on the triangle to
> open them, then realize that I don't want to launch anything from this
> menu: so I click on the desktop to close the menu, but that just opens
> another menu for me. 
> 

I have thought about making them regular gtk menus. I think I agree with
you here.

> I'd also like to see some options for configuring which menu pops up
> on which mouse button, when clicking on the desktop. I've never seen
> any user interface in the world where left-clicking on the desktop
> pops up a menu, and it's very disorienting for me. I'd like to see the
> left-button menu moved to the middle-button, but even better, make it
> user-configurable.
> 

xfce 3 has it ;-) probably CDE too. Anyway, since we have nothing else
on the desktop I think it's perfectly all-right to use the left button.
The right button can then be window list. Middle button clicks are
really awkward IMO.

> > - XFWM: Window-to-Window snapping.
> 
> Yes! ;)
> 
> Also, I think there should be some kind of global iconset for XFCE,
> that all apps can draw from (I think this was mentioned elsewhere on
> this list; it is a good idea). That way, XFFM and xfpanel would have
> consistent-looking icons ;)
> 

I think 'there should be' one too ... *snaps fingers* ... no, sorry,
nothing happened. Someone will actually have to make the icons, I'm
afraid.

> Oh, and one final thing. On the configuration menu that lets me
> configure the order of the titlebar buttons, I am presented with a
> grid of radio-buttons. This is a very horrible user-interface design,
> and very, horribly confusing... I'm sorry to say it, but it's true!
> What you should do is have something like this:
> 

Well, this is the part that annoyed me. 'Horrible interface', 'what you
should do'? How about, 'I dont like this interface' and 'I would prefer
something more like this'? Much friendlier, and much more likely to
get a good response as well. Again, it's probably just me.

> http://www.hwcn.org/tutorials/email/toolbar/images/customize.gif
> 
> Don't flame me for posting windows screenshots, but that's just an
> example of a good interface for this particular purpose. "Hidden"
> things go in the list on the left, visible on the right. Then you can
> use the"Move up" and "move down" buttons to control the actual order
> of the buttons themselves.

Well, I don't like that interface at all. Takes much more space to
present the same info. I'm not saying the current one is perfect, but I
prefer it over this example.

> Just remember, I love XFCE4, and I'm only trying to make it better
> with constructive criticism! Thanks for listening.
> 

Well, sorry I got annoyed and thanks for the input anyway.

	Jasper