gnome-utils proposal

[Radomir Dopieralski]

Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 07:50:36PM +0200: 
> Another gnome package proposal. It consists of useful utilities which 
> are only run explicitly and for which we have no equivalents (except for 
> screenshot as a panel plugin)


[snip (see below) ] 
> 
> I know there were plans of adding search to thunar and also a disk usage 
> view but those have not materialized afaik. Same for floppy formatter.
> 
> Since many users would find these helpful but would not know where to 
> find them if not installed I propose including them.
> 
> Pros, cons?

Let's see what alternatives are there:
 
> The utils are:
>    - baobab, a disk usage analyser

I think there was another, non-gnome utility, called gdmap, but its
output is much harder to analyze and less useful. I also find it harder
to operate.

There are command-line tools like df and du, but they are only suitable
for advanced users.

Thunar can display a summary of a directory's disk usage when you click
"properties", but there is no overview.

>    - gfloppy, a tool for formatting floppy disks

Two comamndline tools, mformat (from mtools) and mkfs.vfat, could possibly
be added as a custom action to thunar or with a simple gui could be
written (but that's additional work, and the resulting application
wouldn't be tested).

>    - gnome-dictionary, a program which can look up the definition of words
>      over the internet (including a panel applet to do the same)

A commandline "dict" which does basically the same thing.
There is also xfce4-dict-plugin.

>    - gnome-search-tool, with which one can find files by name or content

There is "catfish", written by #xubuntu regular, and also
tracker-search-tool (is it the same as gnome-search tool?). I won't even
mention beagle ;)

>    - gnome-system-log, a log viewing application

For now we just tell users to use a text editor. A dedicated application
is nice because a) it shows in the menu b) it lists the available log
files. A similar effect could be achieved by making links to the log files
in the menu, but the log viewer also has the nice feature of comfotable
date choosing.

>    - gnome-screenshot, a tool to take desktop screenshots and save them 
> into    a file

There is ImageMagick's "import" and a separate "scrot", which could be
bound to the "print screen" key by default. There is the aforemntioned
desktop plugin. Gimp can take screenshots.

-- 
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski <http://sheep.art.pl>
  Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity. -– David Gelernter