More panel feature ideas

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Jasper Huijsmans schrieb:
> Jannis Pohlmann schreef:
> 
>>Hey Jasper,
>>
>>I just read the mails in the '4.4 default look' topic and had an idea
>>concerning the starter plugin.
>>
>>We have xfce4-appfinder, we have Thunar in which you can select
>>applications for certain filetypes from a dialog - why not implement
>>this in the starter dialog, too?
>>
>>Usually, when you create a starter, it's for an existing program. In
>>this case, just selecting the program in a dialog and make the dialog
>>insert the program's command and icon into the starter item
>>configuration would be very cool.
>>
>>What do you think?
>>
>>I know, you don't have much time at the moment, so I'd post a feature
>>request in Bugzilla, if you don't mind.
>>
> 
> 
> Please go ahead, it's a good idea. In fact Eduard already made the 
> appfinder a custom widget, so that it might be moved to a library to be 
> used in other programs.
> 
> The problem here for me is that every one of our programs that deal with 
> menus or desktop files has a different implementation. I really would 
> like to have one common way to get a list of applications.

You're right. Having *one* common implementation is important since this
is a point where lots of applications (panel, xfdesktop, file managers,
appfinder, menu editor) come together.
But this definitely is something for the time after 4.4, as Brian
already stated.

I could imagine doing this myself, but I won't be able to do so before
March. Before, I wanted to continue the work on InstallIt (make it ready
for binary package installion at least, so we can use it to ship Xfce
for all distributions we already have package(r)s for).

Perhaps I'll be able to already have look into the different
implementations now and sum up my ideas on how we could move all this
into a single shared component.
BTW, I think it should go into libxfce4util. It should just include
basic stuff (like searching, sorting and iterating over available
applications) and leave the user interface up to the software using it.

Just my ideas about it.

- Jannis