GNOME Desktop and Developer platform 2.8.2

you can work with the files just fine in any app which uses gnome-vfs, and tells the file selector so it will list those servers.

You can also edit the GNOME Applications menu by right clicking. Let's say you way to add a Firefox launcher in your Internet submenu -- you click Applications, go to Internet, and then right click in there, goto Entire Menu, Add New Item to this Menu

You can then add a new item in the same way you'd add a launcher.

In Nautilus hit ctrl-L and type applications:// or for all users, applications-all-users:// (I think that's right not on my Linux box right now so I can't say for sure).

Right click, create a new launcher, or delete, or whatever to your heart's content.

I believe this is covered in the Gnome help.

Could they have made it any less intuitive?

At least in KDE, bloated as it is, there's a readily available app that edits menus. How the hell is someone supposed to know they have to use the file manager to add applications to the menus?

And don't say RTFM, because GNOME is supposed to be so simple that you don't need to RTFM.

feh.

Probably it is the job of the distro to create either a Desktop Link and/or Menu Option that invokes Nautilus with the "applications://" or "appplications-all-usrs://" URL as "Edit Menu" and/or "Edit Menu for All Users".

Remembering windows size and position is a function of the application. The window manager cannot know enough about a window to distinguish it from similar ones.

If an application doesn't remember the position and size, then file a bug with that application.

Ahem!

What about an opt out option? Why can't applications that do not need position and size to be remembered have an opt out option on the control menu so the window manager can read that and act accordingly?

Just a thought.

Fair comment, however I am not really sure how to do that.

Could you or someone else please advise me of the process, and I'll get it underway.

However, as one of the apps in question happens to be nautilus, (always returns to a particular size and position). I find it difficult to accept that this has not been addressed previously.

Likewise with menu editing. As, (to the best of my knowledge), this has been broken since Gnome 2.x was released.

I have searched on this particular topic and found references to the topic at gnome.org/start/2.0/menuediting.html, which is how I learned about manually editing .desktop files :-(.

Once again I find it difficult to understand that this has not been resolved to date.

Nevertheless once I learn how to file bugs, I will do so. Once again some advice on the process would be appreciated.

Cheers.

>However, as one of the apps in question happens to be nautilus, (always returns to a particular size and position). I find it difficult to accept that this has not been addressed previously.

From the 2.8.2 changelog:

========================================
UPDATED: nautilus-2.8.2
========================================
...(irrelevant info)
* Save browser window geometry
...(irrelevant info)

I take it that means the window position/size is now saved (have to wait until FC3 updates to Nautilus 2.8.2 to verify though).

>Likewise with menu editing. As, (to the best of my knowledge), this has been broken since Gnome 2.x was released.

The GNOME menu implementation has just been redesigned (according to the freedesktop.org XDG spec) in the 2.9.2 development branch and hopefully there will be easier management of menus in the GNOME 2.10 release.

As for filing bugs, depending on the distro you're using, you may see a Bug Buddy (BugBuddy?) entry in the System Tools menu. This application will allow you to report bugs on any component of GNOME. Bugzilla is the database that stores the bugs - found at http://bugzilla.gnome.org. You may visit that site and file the bugs from there also after registering an account (same place any bugs filed through Bug Buddy goes). Lots of information to guide you on filing your first bug can be found on that site.

Note I am not a GNOME developer, merely a user.

Thanks for the advice. In fact I found it quite inspiring, as a 'mere' GNOME user myself I obviously have'nt followed the progress of GNOME as much as I could.

To that end I have now joined the forum, paid a visit to the 2.9.x page, (very interesting), and will endevour to become more involved.

FYI, I have found FC3 packages for nautilus 2.8.2, (check your local mirror), it's currently in 'development'. And the 'bug' has indeed been fixed. :-)

The Bug program is listed in the Programming menu as 'Bug Report Tool'. Not being a programmer I have simply not payed attention to the menu's contents.

Thanks once again.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133243

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133243

I don't think I've had that problem since 2.6.x. (I'm currently running 2.9.2).

how can you install gnome-control-center in
2.9.2?

I just tried it with 2.8.1 and all's well. I opened it up, I could hear the hard drive churning, but I clicked on the input box as fast as I could and was able to type anything in my /usr/bin directory without any lag whatsoever. It immediately matched anything I could throw at it without any lag whatsoever, and this is on a 1GHz AMD BarelyAlive.

Try upgrading Gnome, maybe?

It may be because I only logout to upgrade :-). Gnome does cache the icons.

if you want, you may try turning off /apps/panel/profiles/default/general/enable_program_list

but then you don't get the (incredibly useful) menu at all... :-)

No, I'm experiencing the same issue with Gnome 2.8.1 on Gentoo. Maybe your distribution precaches the path, but it should work regardless of distribution and not require any kinds of outside optimization.

That said, my laptop has 5 extra hotkey buttons for wlan, browser etc. I assigned one to gnome terminal, so I don't care about the run dialog anymore.

I agree about bookmarks. I have a workaround for that: I have a Bookmarks folder in my Desktop and inside I've created "Link" launchers to my preferred locations. "Link" launchers are the fastest way to open a spatial nautilus window to a known location.

How to create Link bookmarks: Create new launcher from the contextual menu on your desktop, select lancuher of type "link" at the dialog that appears and place at the url "file://place/" and that's it!. Unfortunately you will have to select an icon for it. Then move the lanucher to your bookmarks folder which is at your desktop. Finally, have fun!

I don't understand why gtkfilechooser browsing is longhorn-like while nautilus isn't

The filechooser is a little file-manager.. so why don't adopt a similar way in Nautilus to move in the the filesystem?

When i have just to browse the files (and not edit, move,..) Treeview is the best!

use the browse, Luke

I use it, but the default is spatial and browser mode in Nautilus isn't implemented like the gtkfilechooser (I mean the path on the top inside combo/list buttons)

Now "browse" can be selected as a default if you wish. I've switched my mind to spatial mode, nevertheless (see my comment above about bookmarks, I know I'm anonymous...)

that's /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser

gconf, it's a wonderful thing. (and nothing like the Windows Registry!)

for the really lazy, check out gTweakUI

> gconf, it's a wonderful thing. (and nothing like the Windows
> Registry!)

wrong. for a regular computer user it's the same thing, because it looks the same and behaves almost the same.

now I know it's not like the registry, you know it's not like the registry, but users - they don't care. gTweakUI should be a part of gnome. why do people have to dig all the way through several keys in order to turn a simple, yet very critical option on or off? even it's not used very often?

have you ever even tried to find anything in a windows registry? it's not an organized thing, like gconf. most of it is just a bunch of apps with indecipherable keys and values. it's huge and unmanageable. my father just ended up with a corrupted one and had to reinstall windows (the backup wouldn't work right). i was worried about gconf originally because it sounded too much like the windows registry but it has proven itself to be easy to maintain.

we don't put everything in preferences dialogs because it just complicates things (*cough* kde *cough*). for things that most people use there is an option somewhere but searching gconf just is so much easier.

-- tamara

>why do people have to dig all the way through several keys in order to turn a simple, yet very critical option on or off? even it's not used very often?

The 'Preferences' dialog (accessible from any Nautilus window through the 'Edit' menu) -> 'Behavior' tab allows you to set the 'Always open in browser windows' option. Does it get any easier? (GNOME 2.8)

Gnome 2.8 fixed this, but there are other issues (more hidden options like keyboard shortcuts, keybindings to applications). This was just an extremely annoying example from GNOME 2.6.

And I still would bet a lot of money that an average user won't distinguish editing the windows registry from editing gconf, it's the same irritating experience - digging for keys, messing with values. Sure it's easier to search, but the user shouldn't have to look there in the first place - and that's my point. Gnome developers are forcing the user to do so whenever he desires to unleash slightly more sophisticated powers hiding in Gnome.

For a lot of keys there (usually) is also a dicription with explanation of what is does and the values it could have. I have never seen this in Windows! Also the structure of it makes more sense, at least to me ;-). I mean when I want Epiphany to always show the tabs bar I would navigate to apps -> Epiphany -> general and tick always show tab bar.

Enabling the same feature in mozilla would take just as much steps. File -> prefferences -> tabbed browsing and then untick Hide tabs bar.....

I do not really see any difference here then moving the prefferences into gconf instead of in a menu.

I've been wanting to write something like that which actually interfaces/replaces the Window List Panel application, but I don't even know where to begin. I'm a seasoned C (and all kinds of languages) programming, but starting from scratch to write Gnome applications is a tremendous effort.

I actually bought two books on Gnome 2 programming, but I can't seem to finish the darned books. Every now and then I'd encounter something I really dislike about the Gnome API (some function names don't sound right and a lot of nasty hacks that was probably fine when gnome was a fledgling project but not now).

At any rate, I'd still love to write the applet. I don't mind spatial browsing, but it would be a lot better if there was a windows list applet that would help one visualize how each window relates to each other. I mean, if you leave your desktop for a few minutes, you could come back to it and not remember how the heck what all the different spatial folders are on your desktop. An applet like that will help organize things much better.

Linux/Gnome lacks a decent IDE with GUI editor. Without it, it's just a pain. Glade is not an option either. If your unlucky, you might even run into an old glade tutorial and actually try to use Glades code-generator.
Autotools is another mess to deal with. Anjuta IDE can (only) generate autotooled projects, but if you're unlucky and your distribution didn't adjust those buggy, everchanging and never backwards compatible scripts to the current autotools version used, you're stuck again. (I admit, I don't know much about those; just that whenever they suddenly worked, they usually broke with the next upgrade again.)

Thank God... or maybe Miguel, Mono came along. Even better, with a bit of luck, Monodevelop could have a visual gui-designer as soon as early next year. Maybe this would finally allow the average hobby coder to get involved with Gnome development.

Is that so? Then tell me how you design a UI with vim. Or for that matter, how to get your project autotooled without having to know about all those details that one shouldn't have to care about (but has to). Or if you don't like autotools (like me), how to tell vim to create all the neccessary makefiles for me (preferably with less effort then writing them myself) :-)

Personally, I *don't want* to "learn an editor". The devs didn't bother to make that program usable without a manual and I refuse to adapt(!) to every little ("great") unix program I might encounter.
You know, the good thing about standard-UIs is that they save us a lot of time. Time that might better be used for the more "interesting" things in life.

1) Anjuta has regular expression searches. I don't know about Eclipse, never used it. Why would I use vi again?

2) Cars are basically all controlled the same. Ancient Unix programs are not. I don't have to relearn the basics for every new car I might drive, yet on unix every little application is controlled completely different. Additionally I might add that leaving a car is trivial if you know how to open it in the first place. Leaving vim is not.

Thats all very nice and all, but probably not a good place for people to start, if your just starting coding and you have to learn vi as well then people won't bother. People work in different ways, and if vim is good for you then thats fine, but that doesn't make a decent IDE useless for everyone else...

Try to start developing a GNOME application with Mono; the ramp-up time and learning curves are significantly smaller, and once you get going, the development pace is rapid.

-Phil Crosby

Another fast way to develop apps for GNOME is Ruby (http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?tut-gtk-helloworld) I hope to see soon a compiler for Mono

Python has Gnome bindings as well, as does Java. From what I understand, though, Mono is the most widely used.

I once stumbled upon a project that did exactly this, but I can't seem to find it... I'll look a bit around and see if I can give you a pointer :)

Bugfixes go in 2.8.x and new features go in 2.9.x (which will become 2.10.x).