Re: Bugs in default GNOME etch?
Hi,
On Tue, Jan 16, 2007, Luca Capello wrote:
> first of all, I posted to d-d because I think the problem is not
> restricted to GNOME, but if I'm wrong, please continue this discussion
> to debian-gtk-gnome (which I cc:ed) and cc: me please (not needed for
> d-d, I read it).
Indeed, not only GNOME is concerned, but bug reports are often
reassigned when needs be, so next time you discover some issues you may
want to fill them directly as you discover them in the BTS. However,
there's some room for discussion for the class of bugs you are
reporting here.
> 1) some entries in the Debian menu lack the icon
> 2) the Debian menu requires xpm icons [2] and in fact only 4 packages
> have icons in the png format (ekiga, evince, gimp, gnomemeeting),
> but for some packages the xpm icon is really bad
> 3) there are different icons for the same entry in the GNOME
> Applications list and the Debian menu
These issues are connected; what you describe is a general problem I
have with the Debian menu: its XPM requirement and its duplication of
the menu entries makes it a maintenance burden.
I can imagine technical solutions to these problems, such as a) making
XPM optional and automatically generating it when it's not available
(yes, this might result in an ugly icon in some cases, but at least we
will have an ugly icon vaguely ressembling the icon, and it might also
result in nicer icons for PNG capable menu displays), b) using the
.desktop files upstream provides to automatically register entries in
the Debian menu (Note that the inverse process exists in menu-xdg :).
Without this, Debian menu support in Debian packages will always lag
behind as upstream updates its .desktop files, icons etc. or
adds/remove programs.
Another personal problem I have with the Debian menu is that it's
slightly cluttered with entries useless to me, and it's also of no use
along of the GNOME menu under GNOME. This doesn't motivate me (and I
expect other people) to fix it.
So, basically, I think Debian menu support for GNOME apps is very low
priority, and would have deeper problems to solve first.
> 4) evince doesn't appear by default on the GNOME Applications list (it
> happened on three different installations). Maybe it's not the
> only one, but I cannot find any others.
This is on purpose, the .desktop file has "NoDisplay=true" because it
is expected that you never need to launch evince, but you simply open
documents from nautilus or your browser and this spawns evince. This
is to not clutter the GNOME menu.
(So, not a bug, a feature.)
> 5) some programs aren't present in the Debian menu:
> alacarte, gnome-btdownload
No idea about these. You're welcome to file bugs if it makes sense to
have them in the menu.
> 6) gnome-panel gives an .xsession-errors because "Unable to open
> desktop file epiphany.desktop for panel launcher". This is normal
> as epiphany isn't installed by default, but I'd suggest to install
> the firefox.desktop instead.
I did not see the discussion which lead to the choice of iceweasel as
the default browser, and I think it would have been a worthwhile
discussion to make publicly.
This appears to be Ubuntu's choice as well, but I think the arguments
brought up back then in the Ubuntu discussion don't apply anymore or
don't apply to Debian (Epiphany is now as usable as IceWeasel is, and
the name "Firefox" is not an argument anymore for Debian).
I suppose what you're seeing is the result of a discrepancy between the
default panel layout offered in the gnome-panel package and the
installed packages.
Perhaps this matter should be discussed on the debian-desktop@ list, at
least I wish we would have a strong Debian Desktop decision-taking
body so we could share ideas and goals and march in the same direction.
Feel free to file a bug against either tasksel or gnome-panel depending
on whether you would like to see iceweasel or epiphany on the default
desktop.
> 7) why still Gnomemeeting by default instead of Ekiga (which AFAIK is
> the default VoIP client since GNOME 2.14)?
This is fixed in the gnome-desktop-environment package, but did not
migrate to testing yet, will happen in a couple of days.
> 8) the gnomebaker window doesn't start big enough to include all the
> buttons (this is clearly a bug, which strangely hasn't been
> reported yet).
Completely unrelated, please see with the gnomebaker package's BTS /
maintainer.
Bye,
--
Loïc Minier <lool@dooz.org>
Reply to: