Desktop configuration interface

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Saturday 11 October 2008, Davide Bettio wrote:
> 1) I tried to sort groups ( Desktop Activity, Desktop Theme, Wallpaper =>
> Wallpaper, Desktop Theme, Desktop Activity), the result IMHO is nice.

for the reasons Marco already noted, they should be left as they are.

> 2) Actually we can choose only one background color: it would be nice to be
> able to chose a gradient.

something that could be added to the colour plugin.

> 3) Desktop Theme is a global setting, so it's confusing and moreover it
> doesn't make any sense to have it on desktop settings dialog.

it's confusing in the sense that it doesn't strictly belong to the same scope. 
but then again .. find me a user who looks at that, scratches their head and 
goes, "gosh darn, i have no idea what the desktop theme will do because it's 
next walpaper!"

the question is whether people will find it or not, and we have the same issue 
with the desktop settings themselves.

now, strictly speaking, we could move the desktop theme into system settings. 
then we would need to have a d-bus interface for the affected applications and 
the ability to write the config file properly.

i'm on the fence with moving the desktop theme setting to somewhere in system 
settings, but this other work would need to be done first.

why am i on the fence? it will be slightly less convenient as the user will 
now have to go to two diferent places to configure things that are reflected in 
the same place. that's one of those things about "usability" when applied via 
straight logic versus considering actual user goals and patterns.

> 4) It's impossible to install a desktop theme from a file...

you mean like a package? plasmapkg has the start of this functionality, but 
it's not really been tested at all.

> 5) we must hide other activities that aren't usable as desktop activity
> (having a panel as desktop activity is a so bad idea)...

yes, this is something that we'll want to add to the .desktop files i think...

#4 and #5 are probably the most immediately useful and important things to be 
done, as they both address immediate problems.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software

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