Tweak Tool in Workstation?

[Bastien Nocera]

----- Original Message -----
> On Tue, 2015-05-12 at 06:02 -0400, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > > * Shell extensions: As long as we're going to offer them, we
> > > shouldn't
> > > relegate them to Tweak Tool. Perhaps gnome-software would be a
> > > better
> > > location than gnome-control-center, but either would be better than
> > > Tweak Tool. (But the gnome-shell browser plugin is very crashy at
> > > worst and unreliable at best, so we should fix that first.)
> > 
> > Extensions is what happens when designers and developers don't agree.
> > If you know you want extensions, installing gnome-tweak-tool is only
> > a
> > step away. If people want to integrate that better, they can add
> > support
> > to the gnome-shell web browser plugin to show whether or not gnome
> > -tweak-tool
> > is installed, and launch Software to install it through the browser
> > if not.
> > 
> 
> At the same time, I think it would be very useful to poll GNOME users
> for what extensions they are using (if any). I think you'll find that
> it's very likely that more users have installed (for example) the
> Alternate Tab extension than are using the default behavior (and it
> would also be interesting to know whether those using the default
> behavior know about the extension).
> 
> Some other extensions that I personally know a great many people cannot
> live without:
> 
> * Topicons: I understand that systray icons are not the way the GNOME
> designers want things to work, but FAR too much software exists today
> that relies on these icons. Shunting them to the message tray (pre
> -3.16) or into a tiny little expansion box (post-3.16) or hiding them
> entirely (Wayland) are not valid solutions for this software. Call it
> legacy software if you wish, but not having a sensible compatibility
> layer is harmful to users.

The sensible compatibility layer is what you see. We don't want to
encourage using a functionality that we've been trying to wean ourselves
off for a number of years already.

We can't keep on indulging applications that are designed like Winamp
and ICQ circa 1998.

There are alternative ways:
https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/MessageTray/Compatibility

> * Window List: For many users attempting to locate the window they want
> across a number of workstations, having the window list at the bottom
> of the screen provides a very quick way to see what is on every
> workspace. It's far easier to process a short line of information than
> to 1) go into the Overview. 2) start paging through each workspace. 3)
> scan the entire screen for the window that matches what you want.

1) Go into the overview
2) type the name of the app followed by enter
or
2) click on the app's icon in the dock

Maybe GNOME Classic is a better option for this site?

> Don't get me wrong: the GNOME designers have made many excellent
> choices: I wouldn't be running the GNOME environment if I thought
> otherwise. But some choices have fallen well into the realm of "perfect
> is the enemy of good". It doesn't matter how "clean" an experience
> feels on paper if people trying to use it get frustrated. There are
> many extensions out there to alleviate some of these pains, but there
> are two problems:
> 
> 1) Extensions aren't common knowledge. Most people assume that GNOME is
> immutable and limited to only the few choices allowed by gnome
> -settings. Related to the above: no matter how easy it might be to
> install GNOME Tweak Tool, it's not *discoverable*. There are no hints
> anywhere that you might want or need it. There are no links from Fedora
> to popular extension pages, etc.
> 
> 2) Extensions aren't (and as I understand it, cannot be) stable API. So
> even when someone has discovered an extension that they really cannot
> survive without, there's no guarantee that it won't be broken on the
> next update. This problem isn't solvable by GNOME, but it can be
> solvable by Fedora: we could identify a set of high-value extensions
> and work with their authors to have them ready before we release new
> versions of Workstation.

High-value extensions should be in the core of gnome-shell. Support for
non-Gregorian calendars for example:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=624959

Or support for media player controls, or builtin weather.

I made a list of those for the gnome-shell developers, but cannot for the
life of me find them anywhere anymore.

> ...
> > > * Power: The "power button action" and "when laptop lid is closed"
> > > settings would be good to have in the Power panel. At least we need
> > > the laptop lid setting; that's easy and commonly-requested.
> > 
> > Absolutely not. Rationale is in the gnome-settings-daemon bugs and
> > commit messages for that.
> > 
> 
> Sorry Bastien, but "go look at the git/bz history" is not helpful.

It would answer your questions though.

> I'm
> also curious why we don't allow users to select lid-close options. At
> least a pointer to one such example of the rationale would be useful.

Everything in gnome-settings-daemon and the gnome-control-center is designed
in such a way that "close the lid" means "put the machine to sleep if it's
stand-alone, turn off the screen if it's plugged in to a dock/external monitor".

As such, any option that might exist changing that behaviour is provided
as-is, YMMV, you-get-to-keep-both-pieces.

> > > * Top bar: Maybe show date in clock could live in the Date & Time
> > > panel, where the 12/24 hour setting is.
> > 
> > We already show it inside the menu, is that not enough?
> > 
> 
> When someone wants to know the date, it's usually because they need to
> use it for something (like signing a check, etc.) right now. Needing
> more than a quick glance to the top of the screen is wasteful,
> particularly since the GNOME design policy is to have none of that
> space used for anything else. This is one of those cases where I cannot
> figure out why the default doesn't simply include the date. I can
> understand having seconds or week numbers in the tweak tool; those are
> far less interesting.

The full date (compared to the week day and time) would also distract from
the more important parts. Do we need the year in the full date? Do we need the
month? Feel free to file a bug about that, the default and/or having a visible
configuration option can be discussed in its own bug.

Cheers