Ideas For A Pandora-Friendly Desktop Environment

[WizardStan]

I could pretty easily add a 'both' folder, but is it important? ie: just a conf change for the default setup, and couldn't hurt I suppose.

Or I could leave 'apps' as "both".

You know what I think right now? Don't change anything! We can back and forth until the cows come home about the merits of one way or another, but thinking about how something should work and actually using it while it's working that way are two completely different things. I might say I want everything in a menu, but then when I actually start using it, I find I've only got a half dozen apps anyway, so there's no harm in leaving them on the desktop. Or vice versa: someone thinks they're ok leaving them on the desktop, and then find they're adding dozens of apps that should really be organized better.
And once people have actually started using it, we can give better suggestions about how we're using it and how to make it better. Without this real world feedback, you could be making changes that aren't actually needed or desired.

 

[skeezix]

Right now it has two distinct searchpaths, and each targets a directory for emitting to. Doing 'subdir by category' and such I've screwed around with (and does work on some desktop managers), but I'm leaving it out for now. ie: ITs better to go simple then throw in every darned thing imaginable. I built in enough bugs already without making that much more surface

I expect we'll get more 'usage data' and can add in some features pretty quick up front after b1 ships. (is this an incorrect stance of mine? I'm trying to get "obvious", "the default works sensibly" and "not too much" for b1 libpnd stuff .. I think its a rational approach, but of courswe it is hard ot drtaw the line for what is in or out.)

We're also more or less in 'freeze' now as we approach ship-day and Xmas. I've got only a few main pressing things to address and then its onyl bug fixes until ship imho The firmware images have come a long way the last few weeks, with tireless efforts from everyone (and triply so for djwillis and notaz; everyone owes them a beer!)

jeff

 

[ashdjones]

Well I certainly appreciate all the work you guys are doing, thanks.

 

[dflemstr]

Right now it has two distinct searchpaths, and each targets a directory for emitting to. Doing 'subdir by category' and such I've screwed around with (and does work on some desktop managers), but I'm leaving it out for now. ie: ITs better to go simple then throw in every darned thing imaginable. I built in enough bugs already without making that much more surface

I expect we'll get more 'usage data' and can add in some features pretty quick up front after b1 ships. (is this an incorrect stance of mine? I'm trying to get "obvious", "the default works sensibly" and "not too much" for b1 libpnd stuff .. I think its a rational approach, but of courswe it is hard ot drtaw the line for what is in or out.)

We're also more or less in 'freeze' now as we approach ship-day and Xmas. I've got only a few main pressing things to address and then its onyl bug fixes until ship imho The firmware images have come a long way the last few weeks, with tireless efforts from everyone (and triply so for djwillis and notaz; everyone owes them a beer!)

jeff

My approach has always been "implement every feature imaginable, ask community for least used feature, remove that feature, rinse, lather, repeat" (yeah, it isn't what you would call a "working approach")

But I think that what we have now is good enough for now; as you say, there's time after B1.

It *might* be a good idea to make the status quo just a little bit broader, though, in order to avoid issues later.

Like adding "Comment", "Title" (for all languages), "X-Desktop-File-Install-Version" etc fields in the .desktop file exporter (The data is there so why not use it) or maybe to make the PND API a little more reliable by for example letting "pnd_pxml_get_version_major" return int instead of char * and likewise for "pnd_pxml_get_background". Things that are easy to do now but not so much later.

This was just one big BTW.

 

[skeezix]

My general approach, if you want to view each others philosophy is a very different thing .. but I'm a software guy. As soon as you have a hardware and 'future deadline', it sort of bloodies things The whole 'release early, release often, have easy and painless change management, easy and not invasive feedback loop" sort of mechanism applies much less

Then again, libpnd/pndnotifyd/etc have been open source since day one, and I wonder how many peopel have run it in a VM to see if it works besides me and you (and the other Panda dev guys of course.)

I'm going to add a few fields to the .desktop export routine if I can, for sure. (And yes, I know, it would be cool if the exporter, the file extension handler, etc were all function callbacks registered via conf but that too can wait for b1.1

jeff