Re: GNUstep's default theme...

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

On 09/14/13 15:30, James Carthew wrote:
> Ricardo: Now that dbuskit exists, is it possible to make System 
> Preferences plugins for configuring Xrandr, pulseaudio, and 
> network-manager? This would make System Preferences useful for 
> configuring the system. I've looked at Etoile and there's a lot of 
> project duplication. They have their own version of system preferences 
> which frankly is api-compatible and duplicating functionality. I think 
> the ideal would be to merge parts of etoile into gnustep. The 
> EtoileMenuServer.app program completes the functionality of the 
> horizontal Macintosh Menu Style in terms of making gnustep act like 
> OSX. I'd like to see it get rolled into gnustep as an optional add-on, 
> and integrate it with system preferences plugins so that you can have 
> a dropdown on the menubar for volume control, wireless network 
> selection, and screen resolution selection like OSX has.
Well, sure it is "possible" SystemPreferences offers an API for which 
different kind of controls can be installed, just make your own 
preferences bundle.
Right now I shy away from making system-specific stuff, because it is a 
lot of trouble, the only thing which I do is battery monitor. I try to 
keep alive an incredible number of applications which still need to be 
updated and stabilized, I try to develop some further, I work on themes. 
Thus I need to set a couple of priorities, additional modules to 
SystemPreferences are currently not on my short-term TO DO. The only 
thing which I thought about is an Xrandr thing to manage the monitors, 
of which i feel the need using GNUstep more and more on my laptop(s).

I imagine that if another project would make a distribution (e.g. 
installable live-cd) it would need to chose a basis operating system, 
kernel and userland. E.g. Linux or a BSD flavour and then make its 
specific modules. And just add them as bundles.

I started working on a volume control application, but as of now it 
remained its infancy, because it turned out to be more than a weekend 
project.

I'm not that fond of the mac-style menu, thus while I understand that 
some people like it, won't invest personal time in it because I try to 
prioritize on other stuff I deem more interesting or important. 
Regarding the "menu-lets" and their counterpart of the "windows system 
tray", I'm still thinking of a good way to integrate them in a NeXT 
style interface. I thought of a couple of designs, but not too convinced 
by any, as of yet.

Riccardo