On Mon, 2002-10-07 at 11:14, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip]
> > It's now impossible to have the Gnome panel(s) be anything but > >always-on-top. > > Is this only if you're running Gnome? Or does it apply to running the > panel in other windows managers? <NITPICK> Gnome is not a window manager. You can use any gnome compliant (there is actually a document for programmers on how to make their window managers gnome compliant) window manager in gnome. </NITPICK> > IOW, I use fvwm, but I run the Gnome > panel (mostly because I really like the the AfterStep clock applet:) > Does that mean I can no longer go to Panel->Properties->All Properties > and select my own Panel Window level? Yup, it's a Gnome 2.0 thing, not a window manager thing. There are *much* fewer properties available for setting in the Gnome 2.0 panel. As a matter of fact: <GRIPE MODE="ON" LEVEL="EXCRUCIATINGLY HIGH"> After complaining a bit directly to Havoc Pennington (the metacity author) about how crippling metacity was for me, I hopped on over to the gnome-usability mailing list archives. Apparently, it is a friggin' *stated goal* to remove many configuration options from Gnome. This is supposedly to prevent confusion among non-technical users. My question is, what pray tell, does having more options have to do with confusion?!?! I mean, if you want to hide the options and relegate them to the old way of using vi (oops, sorry, emacs if you so choose ;-)) to edit dot-files, then fine. REMOVING the configurability accomplishes nothing but aggravating the technical user. Hide it so it doesn't clutter menus and property sheets, but DON'T REMOVE them. I've also seen the argument that a fixed non-configurable behavior makes the code more maintainable. This is a real concern (making the code more maintainable) but has ZERO to do with usability arguments, yet I have seen it brought up on the usability list. I've also seen the code maintainability argument brought up in the GTK+ vs. QT wars, but with usability in mind. I can't address the ease of each toolkit from the programmers point of view, since I haven't done any programming for some time, but once again, I say, that usability (the user perspective) and code maintainability (the programmer perspective) have zero to do with each other. Yes, maintainable code means that things can be done faster, and therefore get working code out there to a wider user base faster. But, I've actually seen people argue that if you can code it fast, and it works, then who cares if it's "right" or "pure". Well, now I know why there is so much bad code, security-wise out there. Improving development speed can be important (time-to-market, yada yada), but not at the expense of doing things "wrong" (term used loosely, here, of course). That's the way of the proprietary software world -- a way that free software authors would be wise to never adopt. This is the problem I see with a number of programmers (and I count myself among the people how need to take note of this at times): they're often more concerned with improving their own development process than they are with improving the user experience. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but too often, I find the later neglected. </GRIPE MODE="off"> *Whew* /Paul takes a deep breath Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. If it starts a flame war, so be it. Perhaps it something that *needs* to be hashed out. > The default is to keep it "always on top", but that property seems to > be inherited from the Gnome "Global Preferences", and can be (in 1.4) > changed on a per object basis. I'll refrain from any comments about "always on top". :-) :-) -- -Paul Iadonisi Senior System Administrator Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux. GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
