Goals for next Xfce releases

[Biju Chacko]

Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> 
> Window manager
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> For me xfwm4 does everything I want it to, so I've no ideas for 4.6.

The only thing that I'd like is some layout functionality ie: 'Tile' and
'Cascade'. I tend to use a lot of terminal windows and 90% of the time
xfwm4's placement algo works fine. However, after I've been working for
a few hours I'd like to clean up and re-tile whatever is remaining.

I imagine 'cascade' might be useful for people who use shading a lot.

> Desktop manager
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Do we want a separate program to manage the background or should it be
> part of thunar? How about the desktop menu?

I really don't care about whether it's a separate program or not. I'd
like to see more Thunar-like behavior for the folder/icon view but with
out loss of the minimised app or empty views.


> File manager
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> No lack of ideas here, I believe. One from me: do we want to try and
> integrate with Tracker for searching? It does sound more in line with
> our philosophy than Beagle.

Maybe some kind of search integration abstraction layer? It doesn't look
like desktop search has been settled -- we'll be seeing a lot more churn
there as different people try stuff. Might as well be in a position pick
whoever looks best.

As it happens, I'm writing something in this area myself but I'm hoping
that I'll be able to implement it in way that doesn't require apps to be
modified to support it. But don't hold your breath. :)

> - Appfinder. Should use new frap menu (libxfce4menu?). It's still an
>   interesting alternative interface for finding and running applications,
>   I think.

Ummm, crazy idea but why not an Appfinder desktop view? I've always
thought that the desktop background is under-utilized.

> One thing that crossed my mind when thinking about 4.6 was that I
> couldn't think of anything that would make us change to 5.0 instead of
> 4.x. So, if we're not going to change it anyway, we could pull a Sun and
> call the next version "Xfce 6". Might be good for marketing ;-)

Naaaaah. How would we change versions when holographic displays become
the standard and we need to move to a holographic widget set?

-- b