A quick idea

[Jasper Huijsmans]

2006/9/12, Erik Harrison <erikharrison at gmail.com>:
> The Xfce settings manager is occasionally praised for its UI. It's
> nice and simple, and much more manageable than a long list of possible
> settings, or a complex tree sidepane and main panel.
>
> Unfortunately it's not a complete tool - it only manages settings for
> the "desktop". That means Xfce and any apps for which we've written a
> wrapper plugin. The remaining Settings tools show up in the single
> biggest submenu on my system.
>
> I propose, for 4.5/4.6 eliminating the settings menu by default in the
> desktop menu, and replacing xfce-settings-show with an app that, just
> like the menu does, shows an aggregate of all the appropriate .desktop
> files, organized by subcategory.
>
> I think this would improve the usability of the desktop, while at the
> same time simplifying how we add buttons to the tool - no need to
> write wrapper plugins anymore, just ship with a .desktop file. It also
> makes it MUCH easier for downstream to add buttons to the tool. I know
> at least HP added a number of mcs wrapper plugins for it's Xfce based
> thin client.
>
> Thoughts?

I think it is indeed important (after 4.4) to evaluate and reorganize
our platform. This includes bringing in libexo and maybe combining
some libraries, but certainly also settings management.

I'd like to see the settings manager be non-gui only and allowing
external programs to get and set values. Then it would be easy to have
external utilities, with desktop files, to allow the user to change
the settings. It would even make it possible to have alternative user
interfaces. Yeah, much like gconf. In fact, I think we should
seriously consider using gconf or at least making it easy to do so at
a later time when they get rid of the corba dependency.

Just some very random thoughts from me...

        Jasper
--
"I should get some coffee." -- Auke Kok