avant-window-navigator for OpenSolaris [LSARC/2008/452 FastTrack timeout 07/22/2008]

[Henry Zhang]

Hi Brain, See my answer in-line,

And I finished the proposal to add some change from the discussing, see 
attachement.

Thanks,
Henry

Brian Cameron 写道:
> 
> Henry:
> 
>>> What is the accessibility impact of this new mechanism of accessing
>>> "applet like things"?  Does this "just work" with accessibility?  If
>>> not, what is our plan to make it accessible?
>>
>> AWN is used to manage the running task, and some applets. We can use 
>> Ctl+Alt+Tab to access the running task, it should be accessibility 
>> support.
>> For the applets in AWN, no way to access them through keyboard by now.
> 
> I think it would be good to discuss some sort of get-well plan for a11y
> in the materials.

These days I discussed accessibility support with the community, they 
confirm me that they have not consider this issue, I will try to push 
them to see if they can do some work on it, at least I can see they 
begin to think add some support so that user can access AWN by keyboard.
And by now we can use Ctl+Alt+Tab to switch in the running applications, 
so these should be support accessibility.
> 
>>> Also, how does this relate to gDesklets?  Although giving users choice
>>> to customize their desktop is a good thing, I hope we aren't going to
>>> end up with a mish-mash of random eyecandy that doesn't work well or
>>> integrate together.
>>
>> There is no confliction between gDesklets and AWN, gDesklets used to 
>> place the applets to desktop, AWN will run applets in its dock. The 
>> applets is different, for gDesklets, using .display file, while AWN 
>> need  .desktop file in the applet package.
> 
> Might be good to explain the relationship between gnome-panel,
> gDesklets, and avant-window-navigator in the materials a bit more.
Added soome explanation on Details of the proposal.
> 
>>> Do users need to compile code to install a new applet, or are the
>>> applets interpreted (e.g. Python code) so that users can just install an
>>> applet and it will just work without needing to do extra complicated
>>> things like compile code?
>>
>> Yes, for Python applet, user can use awn-manager to install directly, 
>> no compile needed. For C, need to build and install.
> 
> That's good to hear.  You could also explain this in the materials a bit
> more.

Added soome explanation on Details of the proposal.
> 
>>>> If someone develop the applet for AWN, should follow Applet        
>>>> Submission at http://wiki.awn-project.org/Awn_Extras:Applet_Submission
>>>
>>> Could you give some examples of what sorts of applets are available for
>>> this framework?  
>>
>> See http://wiki.awn-project.org/Applets:DevelopmentGuidelines, where 
>> list the detailed guideline on what the applet should be.
>> You also can download awn-extras, there are some stable example.
> 
> It doesn't seem like we have spent enough effort figuring out which
> plugins we should/could be including by default.  Wouldn't
> avant-window-navigator be more useful if we shipped some plugin
> features with it?  
They generally used to make the display effect better to look, so not 
necessary.
>Do other distros ship any plugins with it?
> Perhaps we should follow the general community lead here.  Though
> this could also be managed in a separate case, rather than this
> case.
 From the webpage, the plugin is with awn-extras, so should in another 
project. And most of plugins are Ubuntu-special.
> 
>>> What applets are installed by default and what do they do?  
>>
>> Currently from what I can see, there is only 1 applet installed by 
>> default, it is Launch/Taskmanager, in order to add some other, have to 
>> use awn-extras.
> 
> It would be nice if the case materials explained more about the one
> applet that is installed by default, and what it does, in more detail.
Added soome explanation on Details of the proposal.

> 
>>> How active are third parties or individuals at creating applets?
>> It really depend on the individual who like to contribute his applet 
>> to AWN, from what I can see, there definitely are quite some new 
>> applets provided by some developers.
> 
> There sure are.  I'm curious what applets other distributions might be
> including by default.
In AWN, by default there is only one applet, all other applets need to 
be added by awn-extras, I discussed with the community yesterday, they 
told me "There are some plans to include more applets in the core 
installation."
> 
>>> I notice the Applet Gallery you describe is here:
>>>                          http://wiki.awn-project.org/Applet_Gallery
>>>
>>> Which ones will we be shipping, if any?
>> Most of the applets listed in Gallery are just in awn-extra, also 
>> there are some applets contributed by some developers, awn-extras is 
>> another different project, I tried to build it, failed, because all of 
>> applets are in this package, some applet need different dependencies, 
>> some of them are missing on Solaris, e.g. python-alsaaudio.
> 
> On Solaris, we support SunAudio and will hopefully soon support OSS.  So
> any applets which depend on ALSA would obviously not work.  It would be
> nice if we provided (at the very least) a spec-file in spec-files-extra
> to allow people to more easily build whatever extra plugins do work on
> Solaris.
Will do once got time..
> 
>>> Although it does look cool, I worry that it will confuse users if we
>>> provide another interface that works very similar to gnome-panel.  I
>>> would appreciate more information about what our future plans are.  Will
>>> avant-window-navigator replace gnome-panel, will it be used together
>>> with gnome-panel, or is it expected that users will pick one or the
>>> other to use?  Perhaps you could explain a bit how you expect users
>>> would actually use this in relation to gnome-panel.
>>
>> Yes, It's a big concern now, we have gnome-panel, should we ship AWN?
>> At the moment, AWN can't replace gnome-panel, reason below:
>> 1, AWN need compositing support, it means before run AWN, you have to 
>> make Compiz start, then AWN can run, so in the non-Compiz environment, 
>> we can only use gnome-panel.
>> 2, There is no launch menu by default in AWN, and the AWN menu can't 
>> updates when applications are installed.
>> 3, Trash in AWN is not stable enough now.
>> 4, maybe something others I did not dig out..
> 
> Whether we ship AWN for these reasons is obviously a business decision
> for the team to make.  It shouldn't affect whether the ARC case is
> approved or not.  It might make most sense to integrate it when the
> above issues are addressed.  However, I would make sure you file bugs
> upstream (probably with both the AWN and gnome-panel projects) to see
> if we can encourage the upstream maintainers to address some of these
> issues (along with the a11y issues).
> 
> I'd talk it over with your project team.
Yes, I did discuss with the project team, and I noticed they have 
realized these issue, and discussing how to fix them, but no schedule now.
> 
>>> If they are intended to be used together, then is it likely that users
>>> be confused by having two sets of interfaces that do very similar
>>> things?
>>
>> Yes, this issue also bother me, so I'd say AWN can provide some 
>> different experience which gnome-panel can't provide, e.g. 3D..
>> So if user like to taste, he can download and use it.
> 
> Right.
> 
>>> managers (metacity and compiz).  Users can easily manage switching
>>> between the two because the GNOME configuration dialogs allows users to
>>> pick which one they will use.  This way users are prevented from
>>> possibly trying to run both at the same time, making a more sane user
>>> experience.  Is switching back and forth between gnome-panel and
>>> avant-window-navigator managed in a similar simple fashion?
>>
>> by now it's impossible to switch between them, because we can't remove 
>> gnome-panel.
> 
> Seems it would be neat to enhance the desktop so users could more easily
> switch between them if they wanted.
Yes, I agree, so in Ubuntu, they generally close the gnome-panel at the 
bottom, and only make the top panel run, and AWN run at the bottom of 
screen, I think we can do in this way, and it's planned that AWN will be 
placed anywhere of screen, so in the future, we can make these 2 work 
together better..

> 
>>> Will we be integrating any of these Extra plugins with this case, or a
>>> separate case?  Or are you just informing us that end users can install
>>> additional applets if they wish?
>>
>> They should be in awn-extras, it's another project, we may consider to 
>> deliver it separately.
> 
> Makes sense.
> 
> Brian
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