[haiku-development] Re: RFC: Packages and the Deskbar menu
- From: John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 19:34:46 -0400
On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Julian Harnath
<julian.harnath@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx> schrieb:
> Quick question: how many applications do you have installed on Haiku?
31 not counting Demos, Deskbar Applets and Preferences.
> I just counted, my Deskbar menu currently has 64 application links,
> sorted neatly by hand in 8 categories. Having a flat list of 64
> applications would be no fun!
There's a big difference between you organizing your apps into 8
categories of your own creation and the system organizing your apps
into categories on your behalf, in the same way that you organize your
files into folders of your choosing but you wouldn't want the system
to automatically organize your files putting them into folders for
you.
Hierarchical organization systems are complex and difficult to keep
track of, those that the system generates and moves items behind your
back doubly so, that's one of the big reasons many people have trouble
locating files on their file system.
I see nothing wrong with a 64 item list and I have already mentioned 3
ways to mitigate the problem of long lists: pagination, scrolling, and
search, there are some other filtering techniques that could be used
as well. Categories though make browsing through your apps much more
difficult and many other problems that I've already mentioned.
On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Urias McCullough <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 10:50 AM, John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I cannot think of a better way to show that a flat paginated list of
>> applications represents the new and improved way of organizing apps
>> illustrated by Gnome 3, while relegating apps to categories is the old
>> way illustrated by Cinnamon. Please do not repeat the mistakes of
>> Gnome 2 and Cinnamon, instead embrace the progress that has been made.
>
> You're kidding right? You realize that Gnome 3 (and by extension
> Unity) have created a massive rift in the Linux desktop world... is it
> progress if people hate it and refuse to use it?
Gnome 3 and Unity changed things, people don't like change. In the
commercial world that is tough cookies, but with Linux if enough
people don't like the change they can fork the old thing, that's what
Cinnamon and Mate are. Just because some are resistant to progress
doesn't mean that the changes are bad, though it does mean that Linux
will always be a fragmented mess. Hopefully Haiku can transcend that
trend and stay unified as we progress.
On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 4:06 PM, Ingo Weinhold <ingo_weinhold@xxxxxx> wrote:
> On 05/22/2013 02:01 PM, Ryan Leavengood wrote:
>> How should the Deskbar menu be organized?
>> (*) Automatically, with applications in categories
>> ( ) Automatically, with applications in a flat list
>> ( ) Not at all, let me organize it
>
> Yeah, I came to the same conclusion.
This sounds like the best plan since we can't seem to agree on a
single course of action. I realize that things got off-topic a bit
from what you were hoping for, I hope that the resulting discussion
has at least been somewhat helpful for you. I look forward to see what
you come up with.
On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 7:06 PM, Axel Dörfler <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 05/22/2013 10:06 PM, Ingo Weinhold wrote:
>> The packager (the person creating the package) would be responsible for
>> adding a symlink in the data/deskbar/menu hierarchy to the package. When
>> the packages are extracted (physically in case of the current zip files,
>> virtually with packagefs), depending on their installation locations,
>> the three directory hierarchies
>> /boot/{system,common,home/config}/data/deskbar/menu would be created.
>
> What I do not really like about this solution is the possibility to choose
> arbitrary directories for the links. Furthermore, having to create links for
> an additional "all" flat list, or whatever we'll come up with in the future,
> sounds rather annoying.
You mean having to create additional links for categories, right? :)
Having 2 organization systems means we'll have to maintain two sets of
links, but, could the links be automatically generated as part of the
package install somehow, or perhaps on first run of the app?
> On a related topic, should it be allowed for applications to put links to
> documentation, etc. in there, too? Because those would further complicate
> flat lists, too.
In my imagination no, the list would be to be composed of apps only,
like how Deskbar currently works. You'd have to organize the
application list manually if you wanted that.
On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 4:36 AM, Stephan Aßmus <superstippi@xxxxxx> wrote:
> On 23.05.2013 09:53, Alexander von Gluck IV wrote:
>> As David said above, is the applications menu supposed to contain every
>> application ever installed, or is it supposed to contain the ones you
>> actually use?
It is suppose to contain all installed apps, although it shows the
ones you've recently used under the "Recent Applications" menu as
well.
> That is exactly the question. And I think the file system layer shows too
> much other files. So I want an easy to access layer which shows *all*
> installed applications, just one icon per app. This is what I have always
> used the Applications menu in BeOS for. For access to frequently used
> applications, I would be using LaunchBox or a new "Pin to Deskbar" feature
> in Deskbar itself (replacing LaunchBox).
You and I see eye-to-eye here it seems. The Deskbar should present all
installed apps and also someday include a separate list of commonly
used apps similar to how the Mac OS X dock or the Windows 7 Taskbar
does, for now LaunchBox fulfills the latter role but LaunchBox could
be integrated into Deskbar and provide much more usability too, it's
on my list of things to do someday, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
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