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Re: Kickstarter was not successful... but it did help things...


From: Ivan Vučica
Subject: Re: Kickstarter was not successful... but it did help things...
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 10:04:38 +0000

Yes, Unity comes very close to what I want.

How well does it integrate with GNUstep? Do I want numerous keyboard behaviors it introduced if I use only a few? How well does it integrate with GNUstep's idea of the dock and application? Wouldn't it be nice to control both sides of the equation in case I want to change "that little detail", without having to beg Canonical to upstream that patch which only affects GNUstep?

What if our WM used the (still-way-too-slow) Core Animation-equivalent and (still-nonexistent) Core Image-equivalent, so that people could play with transitions of windows and filters above windows?

And if I manage to hack support for global menus using the DbusMenu protocol, and hack support for DBUS-based notifications, and handle them better than unity (Cinnamon is nicer), while at the same time bringing document-aware windows (using X11 atoms probably), .appbundle-aware launcher and .appbundle-and-app-status-aware dock-where-app-still-controls-the-docktile/icon, that would be a step forward, I think. It is reinventing the wheel, but with (ideally, hopefully) making it smoother on the outside so it plays nicely with GS.

BTW, I found Unity lovely for personal use, but too annoying for use at work. My journey has taken me to Cinnamon. It's the small things that annoy me. Maybe I can avoid that, and provide a better WM and DE for use case of "running GNUstep-based apps".

Oh, and while I think the "nice" and integrated way to do it is through DbusMenu, let me express my ... disappointment in assumptions Canonical made when writing it and documenting it. Assumptions being "everyone loves GTK or Qt, if not then glib, if not then is very familiar with DBUS and needs no debugging tools from us such as a standalone menu viewer". And it also cannot and won't support the use case of adding NSViews into menus. An alternative is for menus to live as separate horizontal X11 windows that the WM can choose how to reorder, show, hide and composite, while having a default DbusMenu-implementing global menu in case the app is GTK or Qt based.

Let's continue this conversation in January or February when/if I get all approvals from my university and my employer.

On Friday, 20 December 2013 01:39:05, Markus Hitter <mah@jump-ing.de> wrote:

Am 20.12.2013 02:05, schrieb Ivan Vučica:
> How about starting with a window manager that does several things I'm
> really used to:
> - knows the concept of a global menu (but does not try to be the center of
> your life like Unity, instead trying to get out of the way)
> - knows the concept of a document-per-X11-window so I can quickly access a
> folder where a document is saved
> - can pick up notifications and store them away for quick retrieval
> - has a nice decoration that happens to be close to what the underlying GUI
> toolkit uses
> - uses animations and compositing tastefully
> - does not (necessarily) include a dock, but launches it and plays nicely
> with it

As far as I can see, Ubuntus' Unity environment does all this already.
It definitely knows about a global menu (mac-like).

The meat is apparently in this package:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/source/saucy/indicator-appmenu

Markus

--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dipl. Ing. (FH) Markus Hitter
http://www.reprap-diy.com/
http://www.jump-ing.de/

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