Discussion Proposal: Specifications about panels and widgets

[Simon Lees]

On 07/11/2018 20:23, IFo Hancroft wrote:
> What I am hoping to achieve with this, is widget and panel interoperability.
> 

While this is possibly technically possible it would really require
every desktop rewriting there widgets / panels to use the same modular
plugin system, this would be much more complex given that currently even
basic things like strings are done completely differently between
toolkits it would be huge amounts of extra work with significant
performance decreases, you then also need to look at sandboxing because
a problem enlightenment has found is if your using C modules for this
and one crashes it will tend to crash the whole desktop.

So while this is technically possible I don't see any desktop developers
agreeing then implementing something.

> On 11/05/2018 02:54 PM, Simon McVittie wrote:
>> On Mon, 05 Nov 2018 at 13:05:24 +0200, IFo Hancroft wrote:
>>> It is not agreed on whether a panel should provide the taskbar/task
>>> manager, menu, tray, widgets.
>> This is a UX design question. If one desktop environment's designers
>> think there should be a panel with a list of running applications (a
>> taskbar), and another desktop environment's designers think there should
>> not, then they are not going to agree on a specification that tries to
>> require or forbid a taskbar: at least one set of designers would object
>> to that specification.
>>
>> Desktop environments have different UI/UX designs, and that's a good
>> thing, because different users have different preferences for the UI/UX
>> they want to use. Some people want a panel with a taskbar, and they should
>> choose a desktop environment that (at least optionally) provides one.
>> Other people don't want a panel with a taskbar, and they should choose
>> a desktop environment that (at least optionally) doesn't provide one.
>>
>> Similar considerations apply to various other UI/UX features.
>>
>> What is it that you aim for desktop environments to agree on?
>>
>> One of the major topics for freedesktop.org is arranging that an
>> application that wants to do something can use the same code for multiple
>> desktop environments (for instance, an application can get itself listed
>> among other applications by installing a single .desktop file that works
>> approximately the same in GNOME, KDE, etc., instead of having to install
>> a .gnomeapp file and a .kdeapp file and so on). What application-facing
>> functionality do you aim to standardize?
>>
>> (In particular, when an application installs a .desktop file, there is
>> no guarantee that it will be presented in the same way in all desktop
>> environments: KDE shows it among other apps in a hierarchical menu,
>> whereas GNOME shows it among other apps in a flat, searchable list in
>> the overview. Both are equally acceptable from the point of view of
>> the Desktop Entry specification, and whether you prefer KDE's design or
>> GNOME's design should be a factor in whether you choose to use KDE or
>> GNOME or something else.)
>>
>>     smcv
>> _______________________________________________
>> xdg mailing list
>> xdg at lists.freedesktop.org
>> https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
> 
> _______________________________________________
> xdg mailing list
> xdg at lists.freedesktop.org
> https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
> 

-- 

Simon Lees (Simotek)                            http://simotek.net

Emergency Update Team                           keybase.io/simotek
SUSE Linux                           Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30
GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B