Notes on Beryl

[Travis Watkins]

On 10/30/06, Thom May <thom at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 1) Gnome keybindings no longer work - deskbar is unusable, I can't quick
> launch terminal and so on without digging through a completely different
> config system.

Not sure about this one, deskbar and tomboy still work when I'm using
beryl. The rest of the keybindings should be copied over in my system
for beryl (explained later).

> 2) I have a whopping great jewel in my notification area. Why? Also, the
> splash screen should be disappeared to ensure that we get a consistent
> desktop startup.

The jewel is just a convenience thing, you could just start 'beryl'
and 'emerald' on your own (or as an autostart thing). The splash will
be off by default in at least Ubuntu's packages.

> 3) Sensible defaults - turning all the bling on by default is potentially
> sensible when developing, but for integration in the default desktop it
> needs to be turned down a lot - I suspect the expose-esque stuff and the
> workspace cube flipping are a "sane" start, but wobbly windows and
> whatever the shivery effect on window creation is have to go! IMO the effect
> at the moment is far too distracting to actually get a comfortable desktop.

There is work on sensible defaults happening upstream in beryl right
now but if nothing else we can do this in our packages.

> 4) Integration into the rest of the desktop - respect pre-existing settings
> of number of workspaces, ensure that the workspace manager continues to work
> correctly, get rid of a lot of the "this window manager goes to 11!" options
> in the Settings Manager and make that a System/Preferences applet, etc.
> Also, the themes need to be manageable from the Themes applet (and ideally
> be the same as metacity themes).

Alright, now for the grand plan explaination. Basically, I want
Ubuntu's beryl packages to use sane defaults, my simplified
configuration applet, gtk-window-decorator by default (it can use
metacity themes), and this thing I plan to start working on soon
called beryl-gconf-proxy that reads/stores settings in gconf and syncs
them with beryl's native .settings file configuration. With this we
can use settings from metacity and etc to keep things consistent.

With all of this plus some other features I hope to see in beryl
before 0.2.0 things should be less jarring when switching from
metacity to beryl and back.

> This is just off-the-top-of-my-head stuff, but hopefully it's not been said
> before and should give some discussion points for Feisty.
> Cheers,
> -Thom
>

I (should) be in Mountain View and would love to discuss this further
with you there.


-- 
Travis Watkins
http://www.realistanew.com