[Interfacewm-discuss] Re: [LinuxSTEP-General] Re: [Simplygnustep-discuss] What GNUstep Re: [LinuxSTEP-General] Re: [Simplygnustep-discuss] What GNUstep

[Nicolas R. <ni...@ro...>]

On 2003-05-12 22:13:53 +0000 ceh...@ma... wrote:


>> Well the code was never officially released, because it lacks some features
>> to be really user friendly ...
>> Anyway the code is downloadable on http://www.roard.com/download/Panel.tgz
>> (caution : crappy and unsupported code for the moment)
> 
> I printed it out and I'm gonna read it on the plane.  There is no indication of any license for this code.  I may end up using this code or extending it, should i assume it's GPL?

Yes ... as I said, I never released it officially, thus the lack of licence. But
I don't think I will sue you :-))))
Anyway my idea now is to implement a dock.app which manage a background window, and perhaps provides some way to change from a
pure NeXT dock to an Afterstep one or a Panel...

> Very true..Maybe there is something better to do with the desktop then, rather than just a place to put a background color or picture?

Well desktop could be used to "monitor" informations, display it..
I used to have the earth map (with up to date satellite pictures) in my
root window for example.

> I was thinking of making a version of the dock which is a solid bar across the screen, so I would not have the "ghost" problem you mention.

The problem wasn't to draw a ghost icon ... but to /detect/ the position of the
mouse with DND while *not yet* on the panel ! without covering the entire screen, it's not possible (or perhaps with window manager cooperation, but frankly I think managing the background window is then preferable)

> I like your idea though, maybe you can use this type of thing to make the desktop itself a better place (see above)?
> 
>> 
>> To end with the background thing : for me it mustn't offers the possibility to put your
>> icons files on it, for the reason stated earlier, but you should have the possibility of customizing the background.
>> That is, put an image (classic), but also put things like meteo, last news, etc.
>> (in the same spirit as konfabulator on mac os x or karamba on kde).

> Hmmm...you're talking about rendering HTML on the desktop.  I personally

Well ... I don't know how konfabulator or karamba manage their drawings (I'm not sure they use HTML on the desktop anyway) but I surely wasn't considered that ... HTML is to rigid and inadapted for what I want (well,
classic HTML).

I was more on the idea of using some bundles providing NSViews
that you could move on your background... for example a bundle drawing
the meteo, etc.

> don't like that idea because I find it way too distracting.  Windows has this feature and I tried it out once but it drove me nuts looking at it.  Also, we don't have GNUstep HTML yet.  Is there some other info we can put on the desktop which is not so intruding?  Whatever is displayed there, IMHO, it should be non-interactive informational only.  Here is a (lame) example:  Change the desktop color from red to blue based on CPU activity.

Yep that's another idea. Anyway this thing isn't my main goal, it's just that,
after trying konfabulator on mac os x , I think it's a nice idea, and could
be worth implementing it... but it's not for tomorrow, I should first finish the
basic Background+Dock.app ;-)
The idea behind anyway is the fact that you don't drop icons on your desktop,
and the desktop is only used to display nice pictures or perhaps monitoring
informations... as I think it would be handled by bundles, people won't be
forced to used it that way :)

-- 
Nicolas Roard