How can we improve the spin?

[Jayson Rowe]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Christoph Wickert
<christoph.wickert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Jayson,
>
> thanks for your elaborate mail. I wanted to get back to you already over
> the "Non-flattering review of Fedora XFCE", but this mail just became
> too long and I never finished it.
>
> This time I'll only reply to some parts and skip the rest.
>
> Am Mittwoch, den 27.06.2012, 23:44 -0400 schrieb Jayson Rowe:
>> a) many aspects of panel layout/themes are very much personal preference
>>
>> ---and---
>>
>> b) sadly, every Xfce 'spin' I tried felt at least somewhat more
>> polished than Fedora's out-of-the box presentation in one way or
>> another...
>
> I think we had some very good releases, like F14, that really impressed
> some Xfce developers. Unfortunately we could not hold up the high
> standard for 2 reasons:
>     1. GNOME and GTK 3 and it's fallout on us
>     2. We were too busy to care about Xfce.
>
> There are definitely some bugs and annoyances in the F17 Xfce spin that
> we should have caught with better QA, but both Kevin and me were just
> too busy with our dayjobs.
>
>> Xubuntu: http://jaysonr.fedorapeople.org/pictures/xfce_screenshots/xubuntu_12_04.png
>>
>> So - looks nice. Greybird is my favorite theme.
>
> Greybird is a nice theme and Simon is a pretty good artist. He can
> completely focus on artwork. On the other hand we don't have a real
> artist in the Xfce SIG, at least nobody who is active.
>
> There are two things I hate about Greybird though:
>     1. The dark menu and panels. Windows 7 started the trend and now
>        everybody tries to mimic it.
>     2. The window decorations use the window content color and as this
>        one is the same for all windows, it is hard to see which window
>        actually has the focus. Only the window title is different. This
>        is annoying, because a small popup can 'steal' the focus and
>        it's not visible at a glance.
>
> While the first is a matter of personal taste, the second is a usability
> issue.
>
>> The Icons look nice, all of the icons in
>> the system tray match, everything looks smooth, integrated and blends
>> together.
>
> As the icons in the system tray are provided by the appications, we have
> no control over them. E.g. gnome-bluetooth hardcodes the icon name to
> the monochrome 'symbolic' theme and there is nothing we can do about it.
> blueman is IHMO no alternative as it tends to break with ever new
> release of NetworkManager.
>
>> Sabayon 9: http://jaysonr.fedorapeople.org/pictures/xfce_screenshots/sabayon_9.png
>> [...]
>> A 2 panel layout that could easily appeal to GNOME2 refugees, but
>> still different from a GNOME2 layout.
>
> If we change the layout, the one thing I don't want is a GNOME 2
> lookalike panel. Xfce is a desktop of it's own and not a shelter for
> GNOME refugees.
>
>> openSUSE 12.2 (Beta):
>> [...]
>> The mixer applet on the panel (Gmixer) doesn't seem to be in our
>> repos,
>
> It was, but was removed because it is unmaintained and orphaned
> upstream.
>
>> but the icon for it looks nicer than the faded icon w/ the blue
>> half-circles we have w/ the default Xfce mixer applet.
>
> I very much like our icon, but that's just a personal preference.
>
>> And now, we all know the default Fedora 17 look:
>> http://jaysonr.fedorapeople.org/pictures/xfce_screenshots/f17_default.png
>> Here I will point out mainly what I don't like: First, I don't like
>> the borders around the clock and notification area...just looks
>> unfinished to me.
>
> IHMO this would need to be changed not only in the default panel layout
> but in the code itself, so new clock applets and notification areas
> don't have a border either. Otherwise it becomes inconsistent. I thought
> about this, but never had the time to look into the code. Patches
> welcome.
>
>> I also wish the Applications Menu icon were the Fedora logo.
>
> Unfortunately we cannot do this. Fedora has a strict de-branding policy.
> All Fedora-specific icons must be in the fedora-logos package and by
> replacing it with generic-logos, you get back a completely unbranded
> system.
>
> In Xfce 4.6 we just provided a svg graphic with the same name as the
> original one (xfce4_xicon1). Because GTK prefers svg over png this
> works, if the svg was removed, the panel would fall back to the original
> one. Other distributions don't care about this and hardcode their icon
> in the config.
>
>> I think the Adwaita theme works well (supports GTK3), but
>> the Nodoka window decorations look dated.
>
> Yes, this definitely is a bug, it's a leftover of the time when we had
> Nodoka also as GTK theme, but with GTK3 we had to change to Adwaita and
> by that time, we should have also changed the window decorations. I
> recently removed that patch in rawhide.
>
>> This next screenshot is how *I* would improve the look we have now,
>> sticking with a same/similar layout:
>> http://jaysonr.fedorapeople.org/pictures/xfce_screenshots/f17_alt_a.png
>> Changes? The Fedora logo for the Applications Menu, no borders around
>> the clock and notification area, and the default Xfce window
>> decoration.
>
> IIRC we discussed all this already, but as I just explained, we cannot
> make these changes, at least not easily.
>
>> Before I took this screenshot, I also ugraded to 4.10, and
>> added the 'Action Buttons' plugin to the panel.
>
> I have been thinking about this, too, but the "action menu" as it was
> called in 4.8 was just completely broken. We should consider it for F18
> though.
>
>> Next, I simply eliminate a *personal* pet peeve - the second, bigger
>> panel that doesn't take up the entire width of the screen.
>
> I agree it is a waste of space, but the alternative would be to hide it
> (this is what I am using). However this seems to confuse new users and
> as you said, you don't like hiding panels either.
>
>> It seems
>> wasteful to me (especially with maximized windows). I also reduced the
>> top panel to 24px.:
>> http://jaysonr.fedorapeople.org/pictures/xfce_screenshots/f17_alt_b.png
>
> Too small IHMO.
>
>> The next layout would appeal to GNOME 2 refugees:
>> http://jaysonr.fedorapeople.org/pictures/xfce_screenshots/f17_alt_c.png
>
> Please, no! Let Xfce be independent, even if GNOME 2 refugees seem to be
> a big target audience.
>
>> Next, is a layout similar to what openSUSE had:
>> http://jaysonr.fedorapeople.org/pictures/xfce_screenshots/f17_alt_d.png
>> A single bottom panel, 24px.
>
> I'm afraid this won't work on small screens. The main menu with menu
> title, the pager and the action buttons menu take too much space. Try
> this on a 14" screen and you'll see that there hardly is any space left
> for the task bar.
>
>> So...now that I've said all of that what do you think? Like I said, I
>> was torn about jumping in as a new guy with suggestions, but I figured
>> why not...the worst y'all could do is say 'go away, your bothering
>> me'...so I did it.
>
> I appreciate your input. It's good to see people do care about Xfce in
> Fedora and I even agree there are some things in the review you recently
> posted that are just bugs and we need to fix them. However it is not
> easy to incorporate the suggestions if we stick to the standards that
> Fedora has:
>      * Don't change a file that belongs to a package in a spin. Changes
>        need to go into the package itself.
>      * Don't change stuff that is not yours. I know that Xubuntu did
>        this in the past when they had a stripped down gnome-session
>        package that was different from the one in Ubuntu.
>      * Make sure everything can get unbranded.
>
>> Other thoughts I've had is, what other things do we do as a 'SIG'. I
>> noticed an e-mail from Rex Dieter to fedora-devel speaking of a KDE
>> SIG meeting - have we as a SIG ever had IRC meetings?
>
> Yes, but only a few people attended and we decided to have meetings just
> on demand.
>
>> Would there be any value? Would anyone attend?
>
> I am not sure if there is value. I think input is nice, but what we
> really need is people doing stuff. We had these discussions several
> times before, for example around F15 where we had a lot of GNOME
> refugees. We had proposals for themes and panel layouts, but it just
> didn't happen. Nobody provided patches or code.
>
> I am willing to give it a new try, but we not only need to meet and talk
> but get things done.
>
>> Since I'm just now jumping in, has
>> there been other recent discussion I've missed about plans for F18?
>
> Not really. We should draft something in the Wiki I think, on the
> mailing list it can easily get lost.
>
>> I know Kevin has spoken of moving to LightDM,
>
> LightDM already was planned for F17, but it was not ready by that time.
> It's still not really, but I think we'll make it for F18.
>
>> and has included Greybird
>> as being installed by default in the spin for F18.
>
> It is included in the spin, but it is not the default. Again, we would
> not just change the spin but change the package and the package still
> has Adwaita as you can see
> http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=xfce4-settings.git;a=blob;f=xfce4-settings-4.9.4-fedora.patch
>
> IHMO we should stick to Adwaita, it is less 'controversial' than
> Greybird and we should try to have a consistent look and feel across all
> GTK based desktops in Fedora, that is GNOME, Xfce and LXDE.
>
> There is a new GTK2 theme called Bridge [1] that mimics Adwaita and
> AFAIK this will be merged into GNOME upstream. If we use this, we
> finally have GTK2 and GTK3 look the same again.
>
> Kind regards,
> Christoph
>
> [1] http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=151057
>
>
>
>
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Thanks for getting back to me Christoph, these are exactly the types
of answers/explanations I was looking for.

Yes I do care about Xfce in Fedora. If there is anything I can
do/learn to help make things better, I'm all ears. As for Greybird, I
wasn't trying to suggest it as default, in fact, I'm still torn on it
myself for day to day use - the Window controls for me, like you said
the Window decorations are a usability issue, and border on 'bug' with
me. I have grown to quite like the decoration listed as 'default' in
the in the appearance settings. It's nice, clean and simple and looks
nice with Adwaita.

I also didn't realize that about the Fedora logo on the application menu.

Thanks again for your feedback, and I'm here to help in any way I can.


-- 
-jayson