Terry the Pepperfish ([info]terryfish) wrote,
@ 2004-07-06 21:26:00
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GNOME 2.6 Bounties

Some people offer large cash incentives. However, since I'm poor, I offer the following: Tell me how to achieve what I want without changing Gnome 2.6 and win a hug or one $BEER token depending on your preference. Fix the issue I have and get it into Debian and win twice as much. Get it into Gnome upstream as well as Debian and win three $BEER tokens. Some of the below are clearly bugs and I've filed bugs where I can. Some are usability issues and could be plausibly worked-around for one $BEER token.

Several of these were pointed out to me by people like [info]keybuk and have since come to irritate me.

My current issue list:


  1. Unable to drag/drop to create shortcuts from sftp:// (or ftp://) urls open in nautilus windows. I want to be able to create shortcuts to bits of my home directory on my server using this technique.

  2. When browsing sftp:// URLs, nautilus leaves smelly zombie processes behind. I've filed a bug here.

  3. Although it's cute when it's a small effect, the bug which causes the panel to wibble around can render panels almost unusable. I filed a bug here about that.

  4. I can't seem to get windows to go off the top of the screen, no matter how hard I try. This is very irritating when I'm grabbing a window with alt+drag to just see what's underneath it

  5. There's no UI element for turning startup notification on/off in panel launchers (or launchers in general

  6. There seems to be no way to hide mount icons from the desktop. My USB key provides /mnt/keyfs and /mnt/cryptokey and I don't want the cryptokey one on my desktop.

  7. If I stick an emblem on a folder, or perhaps give it a custom icon, it'd be nice if that carried through somehow into the nautilus folder window which is for that folder.

  8. Nautilus should be able to distinguish XML documents based on their DTD.

  9. I can't work out how to make my workspaces wrap at the edges. It'd often be faster for me to move one workspace-right rather than four workspaces left — Note, brightside does not do what I want

  10. I have renamed the Wastebasket icon on my desktop to "Dustbin" because I like that name. But the "Places" menu still says 'Trash' The right-click menu still says "Move to Trash" etc. This sucks from a consistency point of view. Either don't let me rename the icon, or make sure it gets renamed across the board.

  11. The whole Gnome-DB stuff (particularly the mergeant stuff) appears riddled with bugs and generally crashy.

  12. I'd like the ability to hide icons in Nautilus windows. E.g. I don't want ~/bin showing in my homedir, 'tis messy enough as it is. -- Won by Thom May



Well, that's enough for now. So fly my pretties and code fixes for me.... Bwuahahaha (Or reply in a LJ comment. Please don't mail me or I lose track)


(Post a new comment)


[info]thombola
2004-07-06 02:11 pm UTC (link)
for (12) create a file named '.hidden' containing a newline delineated list of files or directories you wish to hide

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]terryfish
2004-07-06 02:20 pm UTC (link)
Nasty. Need UI for this somehow...

You win one $BEER token. Comgradulayshuns.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]thombola
2004-07-06 02:28 pm UTC (link)
yeah, some form of UI would seem sensible, but i have no idea what form it would take...
a menu option of something like "never show this directory again" or something might work

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]gerald_duck
2004-07-06 02:30 pm UTC (link)
Obvious workaround: just use the Unix commandline like God K&R&T intended.

Mine's a bottled Coke with ice but no lemon, ta. Actually, a dozen bottled Cokes, given that I've just solved all the problems in one go. (-8

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]terryfish
2004-07-06 03:40 pm UTC (link)
You have failed to solve the problems. You score zero $BEER tokens.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]gerald_duck
2004-07-06 03:53 pm UTC (link)
could be plausibly worked-around for one $BEER token

I provided a workaround!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]terryfish
2004-07-06 04:06 pm UTC (link)
An unuseful one which I already knew about. Still no tokens for you, mr Duck

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Some comments
(Anonymous)
2004-07-06 02:44 pm UTC (link)
(4) is a metacity "feature", use Openbox/sawfish/something else.

(5) can be hacked by editing the .desktop file and removing StartupNotify=true. A UI for this might be in 2.8, as launcher editing has had some love.

(6) might be fixed by (12)?

(8) I so want this myself. I must prod the list.

(9) I don't believe is possible with metacity. However, another WM might allow this behaviour. I hear people who don't like Metacity like Openbox...

Ross

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: Some comments
[info]terryfish
2004-07-06 03:49 pm UTC (link)
Unfortunately you don't win any $BEER tokens this time. Try harder :-)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]acheron_hades
2004-07-06 03:24 pm UTC (link)
Get back to using the command line like the man you are - X exists only to run xterms.. (and a web browser, these days) ;-)

Did you get my recent email? What did you think?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]terryfish
2004-07-06 03:41 pm UTC (link)
Feh. I do use the commandline. Doesn't stop me wanting to make Gnome better. Particularly for when I introduce my Father to it.

Yeah, I go the mail. I'm polishing the stuff I'll need to attach to anything I send in response. </coy and careful>

(Reply to this) (Parent)
heh
[info]keybuk
2004-07-06 04:41 pm UTC (link)
most of the above win my "Arch Developer of the Day" award for their amazing ability to answer any question with "you're doing it wrong" or "use $OTHERSOFTWARE instead" :o)

Anyway, some answers for you...

(1) this is because it makes symlinks, it should probably make .desktop files if it can't do that -- GnomeVFS I think

(2) stinky

(3) Don't let Kinni make you replicate this, HE WILL BREAK YOUR PANEL! :-)

(4) this is kinda a Metacity feature... the theory is that Alt+Drag isn't "discoverable" so lame users wouldn't know about it and would lose their Windows off the top of the screen and not be able to get at the title bar to drag them back down again.

All well and good, except surely if you knew about Alt+Drag to get it off the top of the screen in the first place you know about it to get it back? That's what I think, anyway.

A patch to allow just this method to take it off the top might get accepted I guess.

(5) no UI isn't necessarily bad ... the solution isn't to just add a preference, the solution is to fix startup notification so it always does the right thing -- that means noticing the app has started and isn't going to tell it anything more

(6) random thought ... what happens if you stick things in "~/Desktop/.hidden" named after the filesystem?

(7) http://primates.ximian.com/~dave/screenshots/Screenshot-EmblemWatermarks.png is coming

(8) Nautilus shouldn't ... the GnomeVFS/MIME layer probably should ...

(9) http://home.jesus.ox.ac.uk/~ecatmur/brightside/

(10) I filed one the other day: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145150

(11) yeah, I don't think it's meant to be stable yet

(12) .hidden as Thom said

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: heh
[info]terryfish
2004-07-07 01:28 am UTC (link)
Yeah, "Arch" gits :-)


  1. So GnomeVFS is it?

  2. Aye. I don't like to think how many braaaains have been eaten by them now

  3. Lies! It's easy to put safe again so long as you don't make it too extreme

  4. Right, so you're saying I should make a patch for metacity and maybe make it a GConf key?

  5. Yeah, but how plausible is it to notice when an app finishes loading? Can Windowmanagers know when an application mapps an unmanaged window (E.g. splash screen)?

  6. Nuffink, hence Ross failed to win a token

  7. Okay so 'Dave the primate' might win three $BEER tokens at this rate

  8. Yeah yeah, I was looking at it from a user PoV, I guess GnomeVFS/MIME is the right place for it. Care to fix?

  9. Assuming brightside does what I want when I get home tonight to test it, you will win a $BEER token

  10. Excellent. You may get half a token for that, if it carries through and gets fixed

  11. Yeah, but being unable to navigate the bloody preferences box without it segfaulting really is shit.

  12. Yep, and Thom won the $BEER token for that


(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: heh
[info]keybuk
2004-07-22 05:58 pm UTC (link)
Not a fix for #2, but at least a way of doing it

In a Nautilus window, File -> Connect to Server

Link name is the name of the "shortcut" you want
Location is sftp://host/path/to/file

It'll appear on your desktop as a pseudo-mount ... utterly unobvious and wrongly described, but it does do what you want as a hack.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: heh
[info]terryfish
2004-07-08 08:51 am UTC (link)
Unfortunately your answer to (9) proved to be incorrect. Brightside only does wrapped warping for mouse warping, not for keyboard warping.

Sux2Bme :-(

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Simple workaround to #9
[info]onest8
2004-07-06 10:56 pm UTC (link)
Not that this is exactly what you wanted, I feel the need to mention how I use my virtual desktops. Open up your keyboard shortcut preferences and assign the following:

Switch to workspace 1 : + <1> (aka: !)
Switch to workspace 2 : + <2> (aka: @)
Switch to workspace 3 : + <3> (aka: #)
Switch to workspace 4 : + <4> (aka: $)
(rinse and repeat)

Now instead of switching left and right just switch to the one you want right away. This does require a bit of a habit change but the efficiency is well worth it IMHO.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: Simple workaround to #9
[info]terryfish
2004-07-07 01:22 am UTC (link)
Unfortunately I have, and use, 18 workspaces. I regularly have more than ten in use. I'm not fond of overlapping windows you see :-) (and yet I dislike ion etc)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Simple workaround to #9
[info]onest8
2004-07-07 03:44 am UTC (link)
Well then, how about just binding the first and last workspaces to quick keys?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Simple workaround to #9
[info]terryfish
2004-07-07 03:50 am UTC (link)
Given that they're in a 6x3 grid, the idea was to make it into a nice wrapping set. Of course, given that you've tried to hard, I shall grant you one hug/$BEER token anyway :-)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Simple workaround to #9
[info]onest8
2004-07-07 04:02 am UTC (link)
w00t!

I just had an idea as to #12 with a UI; a simple Nautilus (Perl) Script could handle the functionality until someone with more C smarts than I can patch the Nautilus context menus and to also change the icon for a hidden item in a somewhat similar way to the way that the icons change for folders opened in spacial view or even just a special emblem would work as well. Just a thought.

Cheers!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Simple workaround to #9
[info]onest8
2004-07-07 08:17 am UTC (link)
In case you're interested, the Nautilus Script I mentioned is now available here (called Hide_Files) and is released under the GPL.

Hope this helps.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
For part 11
[info]thombola
2004-07-07 04:01 am UTC (link)
I guess glom doesn't fill your use case?

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: For part 11
[info]terryfish
2004-07-07 04:05 am UTC (link)
Apps menu -> Desktop Prefs -> Advanced -> Database config

Configure a datasource (for arguments sake, to a nice postgresql db you happen to have lying around). then open it and choose 'tables' from the tabs in the dialog.

Pout massively as it segfaults at you.

Does glom fix this?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]davyd
2004-07-07 09:40 am UTC (link)
6. Since the mounted items on the desktop are not files, they do not listen to '.hidden'. In nautilus 2.7.x there is a key to not show mounted volumes on the desktop. Your other option is to remove the 'user' field from the cryptokey mount, which means nautilus won't display it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]terryfish
2004-07-07 10:58 am UTC (link)
Unfortunately that would make it much much harder for gnome-volume-manager to mount the partitions :-(

Oh well :-(

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(Anonymous)
2004-07-26 03:58 pm UTC (link)
The gconf key /apps/nautilus/desktop/volumes_visible should prevent mounted volumes appearing on the desktop. All of them. I'm not aware of any method to hide them independantly of each other.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

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