Customizing Gnome-Panels

[Sebastien Bacher]

Le vendredi 22 septembre 2006 à 18:50 +0200, René Oelke a écrit :

> Yes, there are some reasons. For example, we want to give our customers 
> with an update a better panel layout with some useful buttons on it. And 
> so on. The customers settings should be merged with the new default 
> panel configuration.

What would that merge mean if the user removed the top panel configured
a left side panel and right side panel?


> Perhaps this should be an upcoming gnome application. A so called "Panel 
> Configuration Tool" oder "Panel Layout Managment Tool".

One of the google SoC projects was about an application to switch
between layout for gnome-panel: http://code.google.com/p/panelswitcher/
That seems to be around the lines of what you describe there


> What does Ubuntu in this case? Will Ubuntu never change the default 
> panel settings in the next versions? Or will Ubuntu change it and 
> existing users they updated the system can't use it because "an user 
> setting and will not reflect any system change"?

A profile change will only apply to new users. That might be suboptimal
but that's the way it works at the moment. We could probably update the
profile for people who didn't do any change to the panel configuration
easily enough. Merging profile changes with the users configuration
looks like a complex problem to me. 
If the default profile add an yelp launcher to the top panel, what would
you do if the user only kept a bottom panel without any launcher and a
autohiden panel on the left side of the screen by example? On what panel
would you "merge" the change? At what place on that panel? That looks
like something you can't automate


Cheers,

Sebastien Bacher