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

Tue Jul 29 19:14:50 PDT 2008

Hi all,

I made some changes on the proposal to make it neat, please check.
Thank Brian for review...

Regards,
Henry

Henry Zhang 写道:
> 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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