New panel in trunk

[Jasper Huijsmans]

Fabian Nowak schreef:
> hi jasper!
> 
> i totally dislike the new panel at the moment - though i'm already developping for it.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. This is the feed-back I need.

There's a couple of different things here, the panel framework, the 
specific implementation of plugins or panel features and issues outside 
the panels control. Implementations are easy to change, fundamental 
framework issues are not.

> 
> 1. menus on starters
>    a. no "remove entry" on rightclicks in menus
>    b. no "add new entry" on rightclick on arrow-button

It's more work adding/removing one item, but less when changing more 
than one item.

>    c. the items in the starter menus are shown in the opposite order of
>       the list where you edit them. i suggest adding a separtor line 
>       into the menu editor after the first item or to even additinally 
>       place it at the bottom.

Yeah, that would be nice.

> 
> 2. panel settings
>    a. configuring the size takes much more time than before,
>       i suggest using an editable combobox with 22, 32, 48, 64 pixels or
>       even better the old one and an otional entry "specify own size" 
>       which would set a spin_box sensitive

Yeah, I'm not entirely happy with this myself. This seems like a good 
suggestion.

> 
> 3. moving items
>    a. should work after rightclick menu option "move item"

How? Popping up a dialog with a position spin box or something?

>    b. ... crashes the panel sometimes

Well, this is of course a bug, and should simply be fixed. A backtrace 
of the crash would be very much appreciated.

>    c. doesn't work with separator items sometimes, it just did ...

The drag and drop seems to be a bit off sometimes. That has to be fixed. 
If only I could find the cause...

> 
> 4. removing items
>    a. popups a dialog which i really did NOT expect, since plugins are 
>       so small that even if you accidently removed them, it is not a
>       matter of time to re-add them; but it is a matter of time to 
>       read this "really remove" dialog when you remove items.

Yeah, I tend to agree. People complained when I didn't have that, though...

> 
> 5. adding items
>    a. ... should really be possible with a button "add to panel" which 
>       puts the item as last element into the panel.

This needs a good way to select the panel to add an item to, though. 
That's why I left it out.

>    b. the options dialog does no longer popup when items are added.
>       very annoying, 'cause first-time-xfce users will not know that 
>       they can for ex. have the pager use two rows.

Yeah, I think I'll add that again.

>    c. the panel just crashed after chaging from "terminal" icon to own
>       icon.
>       actually, it does most of the time when trying this in either  
>       starter.

Please, get me a backtrace of the crash, this should be fixed.

>    d. there is no dnd-possibility onto the icon-button in starter dialog
>       as it was in 4.2.

Oh, right. Well, that needs to be added then.

>    e. without tabbing thru the starter config (due to the icon list in 
>       the middle of the order when tabbing thru the fields, i got to 
>       mouse click), many options are not kept or used from their entry 
>       fields. 

Yeah, it seems this isn't always working properly. I did change some 
things, so this may work now.

>    f. what about a separator line?

Where?

> 
> 6. translations are quite old and should start to become reviewed...
>    a. i attached de.po.gz for trunk (moritz already said it was ok to 
>       help out)

Nothing to like about this, is there? It's a complete rewrite, so 
translations need to be updated. Big deal.

> 
> 7. pager
>    a. i just found that the pager is disabled because - like in gnome - 
>       it is  used in the old taskbar - uh, that's not xfce'ish i think.

Hehe, that was not intentional. It was for testing purposes only and has 
been fixed.

>    b. adding it made my panel just crash.

Please, if you experience crashes, try to get a backtrace with gdb. It's 
very hard for me to fix things otherwise.

> 
> 
> the clock and separator are no more transparent after having moved any
> item in the panel. reloading the theme makes them transparent again.

This is a compositor / X Composite issues, nothing the panel can do 
about it.

> i'd also like to change the fontsize of the analog clock display - at
> least as far as i allowed in the sensors plugin by having 5 different
> sizes.

Yeah, me too. Never was there before though, so it isn't worse than the 
old clock.

> 
> this reminds me that porting the sensors-plugin won't be fun since i
> could rely on exactly 5 well-defined panel sizes to adjust how many
> items to put into one row - you can try adding about 4-6 values, it will
> adjust according to the panel size, how many labels to display per
> column.

You know the real size, you can use that to adjust the labels.

> 
> where are the icon theme settings??? i got an ugly crystalsvg'ish theme
> now :(

They have been in the user interface settings for a long time now. Only 
4.0 had separate icon themes.

> 
> where is the default config consisting of menu, terminal, file manager,
> browser, multimedia, printer and settings? (and panel, clock, ...)
> 

As I said, the newpanel is a complete rewrite. A new default 
configuration has to be made at some point before the release.

> basically, it think that managing starters and their menus has become
> much more complicated and unintuitive.

I don't believe that. It's one dialog for all items instead of one for 
each. It's different, sure, but I don't believe it is more difficult.

> 
> to sum up, the current trunk panel is the right way to building an
> alternative gnome panel, 

What on earth do you mean by that?

> it is not the way to keep power-users 

I don't believe there's anything in the old panel that can't be done 
with the new panel...

> nor to
> gain newly starting *nix users 'cause they will return to gnome/kde
> where they came from as it makes a lot of things much easier.
> it was especially the panel, lateron the session-manager which made me
> use xfce. knowing how to configure gnome to look like my old
> xfce4.0/4.2, this reason is no longer given.

Sorry, but I really don't understand how you reached this conclusion, 
not from the things you mention above.

> 
> what i really DO like is
> - having one panel for taskbar, bottom panel (, iconbox?).

This is the only thing that really has to do with the new panel 
framework, and I'm glad you like it ;-)

> - having those frames around systray - quite good for new users IMO
> - and having the option to turn the frame off after having found it ;)
> - panel stays at top when settings are up.
> - the file-selection window does use the current path when opening

These are all just implementation issues, mostly with plugins, that can 
be changed and improved at any time. That goes for most of the 
complaints you have as well.

> 
> best regards, fabian

Thanks for the comments. We need feed-back to make things work in the 
best way possible.

	Jasper