On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:44:31 -0400, Jim Henderson wrote:

>> This seems to be a worrying trend. GNOME 2.x had a sea of configuration
>> options. GNOME 3.x has almost *nothing*. In order to change anything,
>> you have to install user-supplied "extensions". (Oh, did I mention?
>> There's no documentation for how to write these extensions. You just
>> have to read the source code. Because that's trivial...) It seems
>> software producers have somehow got the idea that it's OK to produce a
>> product with no configurability, and let a dozen different 3rd parties
>> write a dozen mutually-incompatible "extensions" each of which solves a
>> different 30% of the problem.
> 
> GNOME3 has plenty of configuration options, set using dconf-editor.

Oh, and for creating gnome-shell extensions?

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/Extensions

Google with search terms "writing gnome 3 shell extensions".

First hit.

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 3/16/2015 1:08 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> For over 10 years now I've been a satisfied Firefox user.
>
> Today I finally got fed up with its extreme slowness, and tried to
> install another browser.
>

Firefox's biggest problem seems to be how to threads things. It works 
nicely, if you have NoScript, and leave everything you don't absolutely 
need in the pages scripts "disabled". Its does vastly worse with a lot 
of active scripts, animated gifs, or anything that has to simultaneously 
load as the page does.

But, apparently... they know the problem, but fixing it... would require 
a complete rewrite of the engine it uses... :(

Hotmail... is broken in everything, imho, since they changed things 
there. lol

-- 
Commander Vimes: "You take a bunch of people who don't seem any 
different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get 
this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem."

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On 16/03/2015 11:55 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> GNOME3 has plenty of configuration options, set using dconf-editor.

GNOME 3 uses the gsettings system to hold its configuration settings. 
It's something like the Windows Registry, but harder to use. (E.g., it 
seems to be impossible to access when X11 isn't running. It's 
nightmarishly hard to configure settings for a user who isn't you. It's 
really hard to navigate without a GUI tool. And so on.)

Since OpenSUSE 13.1, gsettings likes to randomly revert certain settings 
every 103 reboots, for no defined reason. This is extremely unhelpful.

But the *most* unhelpful thing is that half the things you want to 
change DON'T HAVE SETTINGS! For example, there is no setting to bring 
back the minimise and maximise buttons; you have to install an extension.

But I guess that's a symptom of another worryingly common problem: GNOME 
3 is *clearly* designed to run on a tablet or a phone. Because nobody 
uses desktop PCs anymore, right? Right?? >_<

> Oh, and for creating gnome-shell extensions?
>
> https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/Extensions
>
> Google with search terms "writing gnome 3 shell extensions".
>
> First hit.

Riiiight. Because I haven't already read that page 65,536 times. :-P

Basically, you write a shell extension by writing a JavaScript file that 
contains [at least] three functions with specific names. These functions 
work by MONKEY-PATCHING THE LIVE RUNNING CODE to make it do something 
different. The extension itself is responsible for reverting these 
changes when you disable the extension. (In particular, there are 
extensions that cannot be disabled, or don't disable properly.) Leaving 
this critical detail up to people who don't really know what they're 
doing and have no documentation to go by is... not optimal.

This, then, is how you write a shell extension. And how do you work out 
which part of THE ENTIRE SHELL CODEBASE you need to monkey-patch to make 
the changes you want?

You read the source code.

For the entire shell.

Because there's no documentation. Indeed, one Stack Overflow commenter 
helpfully commented that "there SHOULD be no documentation, because the 
source code is the documentation". No, random Internet user, the source 
code is not and will never be the documentation. Because the source code 
gives you the *implementation* not the *interface*.

Then again, when your entire extensibility platform is fundamentally 
based on purposely breaking encapsulation to start with...

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On 17/03/2015 02:20 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Firefox's biggest problem seems to be how to threads things.

That would seem to be the case. Load any moderately complex page, and 
the CPU usage goes sky-high.

Does anybody else remember when everybody started switching to Firefox 
because it was so much faster than IE? People used Firefox even though 
dozens of high-profile web pages only worked with IE. (Like I said, 
running a dated version of Firefox was *so much faster*!) Now, it seems, 
the boot is on the other foot.

It's a shame, because Firefox seems to have some really lovely developer 
tools, if you want to build crazy web-stuff...

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Le 17/03/2015 20:00, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :

> But I guess that's a symptom of another worryingly common problem: GNOME
> 3 is *clearly* designed to run on a tablet or a phone. Because nobody
> uses desktop PCs anymore, right? Right?? >_<
> 

Well, I do not use gnome anymore on PC. xfce rules now.
I enjoyed gnome2 and its applets. They lost me with unity & gnome3.

>> Oh, and for creating gnome-shell extensions?
>>
>> https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/Extensions
>>
>> Google with search terms "writing gnome 3 shell extensions".
>>
>> First hit.
> 
> Riiiight. Because I haven't already read that page 65,536 times. :-P
> 
> Basically, you write a shell extension by writing a JavaScript file that
> contains [at least] three functions with specific names. These functions
> work by MONKEY-PATCHING THE LIVE RUNNING CODE to make it do something
> different. The extension itself is responsible for reverting these
> changes when you disable the extension. (In particular, there are
> extensions that cannot be disabled, or don't disable properly.) Leaving
> this critical detail up to people who don't really know what they're
> doing and have no documentation to go by is... not optimal.
> 
> This, then, is how you write a shell extension. And how do you work out
> which part of THE ENTIRE SHELL CODEBASE you need to monkey-patch to make
> the changes you want?
> 
> You read the source code.
> 
> For the entire shell.
> 

That's why I now prefer the xfce's run a shell widget (generic monitor):
the output for logo and text is not so fancy, but for periodical
scanning of a resource, it's easy enough to allow me to have want I
wanted (and easy testing), without problem. I could even have the shell
to launch a binary, if I dare to not be portable (and a bit slow for a
double fork)

> Because there's no documentation. Indeed, one Stack Overflow commenter
> helpfully commented that "there SHOULD be no documentation, because the
> source code is the documentation". No, random Internet user, the source
> code is not and will never be the documentation. Because the source code
> gives you the *implementation* not the *interface*.

Right. At best: the documentation is in the source code, for doxygen to
extract. But "Source is all you need" is just bad. Code never explains
the concepts.

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>> But I guess that's a symptom of another worryingly common problem: GNOME
>> 3 is *clearly* designed to run on a tablet or a phone. Because nobody
>> uses desktop PCs anymore, right? Right??>_<
>
> Well, I do not use gnome anymore on PC. xfce rules now.
> I enjoyed gnome2 and its applets. They lost me with unity&  gnome3.

Sadly, this seems to be the way of the world. At work I'm forced to use 
Windows 8, which keeps insisting that my desktop is actually a tablet. 
Complete with low-detail fonts, and an ugly, blocky colour scheme that a 
tablet can handle. Because why would you pay £1,000 for a developer 
workstation and then expect to use it like a developer workstation?

>> Because there's no documentation. Indeed, one Stack Overflow commenter
>> helpfully commented that "there SHOULD be no documentation, because the
>> source code is the documentation". No, random Internet user, the source
>> code is not and will never be the documentation. Because the source code
>> gives you the *implementation* not the *interface*.
>
> Right. At best: the documentation is in the source code, for doxygen to
> extract. But "Source is all you need" is just bad. Code never explains
> the concepts.

Indeed.

All the source code for the Linux kernel is freely available. Yet no 
sane person expects you to actually read the source code to figure out 
how you open a file!

(Then again, the Linux kernel obeys POSIX and similar, so...)

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Am 17.03.2015 um 20:00 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:

> But I guess that's a symptom of another worryingly common problem: GNOME
> 3 is *clearly* designed to run on a tablet or a phone. Because nobody
> uses desktop PCs anymore, right? Right?? >_<

Why does that sound strangely familiar?

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On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 19:00:21 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> On 16/03/2015 11:55 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> GNOME3 has plenty of configuration options, set using dconf-editor.
> 
> GNOME 3 uses the gsettings system to hold its configuration settings.
> It's something like the Windows Registry, but harder to use. (E.g., it
> seems to be impossible to access when X11 isn't running. It's
> nightmarishly hard to configure settings for a user who isn't you. It's
> really hard to navigate without a GUI tool. And so on.)
> 
> Since OpenSUSE 13.1, gsettings likes to randomly revert certain settings
> every 103 reboots, for no defined reason. This is extremely unhelpful.

Could be a bug.  Have you asked in the openSUSE forums for some help, and/
or reported a bug?

> But the *most* unhelpful thing is that half the things you want to
> change DON'T HAVE SETTINGS! For example, there is no setting to bring
> back the minimise and maximise buttons; you have to install an
> extension.

No, you don't. gnome-tweak-tool -> Windows.

> But I guess that's a symptom of another worryingly common problem: GNOME
> 3 is *clearly* designed to run on a tablet or a phone. Because nobody
> uses desktop PCs anymore, right? Right?? >_<

I use GNOME3 every day, and not on a tablet or touchscreen.  Works fine 
here.

>> Oh, and for creating gnome-shell extensions?
>>
>> https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/Extensions
>>
>> Google with search terms "writing gnome 3 shell extensions".
>>
>> First hit.
> 
> Riiiight. Because I haven't already read that page 65,536 times. :-P

You said it wasn't documented.  It is.

> Basically, you write a shell extension by writing a JavaScript file that
> contains [at least] three functions with specific names. These functions
> work by MONKEY-PATCHING THE LIVE RUNNING CODE to make it do something
> different. The extension itself is responsible for reverting these
> changes when you disable the extension. (In particular, there are
> extensions that cannot be disabled, or don't disable properly.) Leaving
> this critical detail up to people who don't really know what they're
> doing and have no documentation to go by is... not optimal.

Got a better idea about how to do it?

> This, then, is how you write a shell extension. And how do you work out
> which part of THE ENTIRE SHELL CODEBASE you need to monkey-patch to make
> the changes you want?
> 
> You read the source code.
> 
> For the entire shell.

No.  What you do is you identify what it is you want to do, and you find 
that part of the code, if that's the way it's actually done (I don't for 
a moment pretend to have written an extension, however given your track 
record in overstating things, you don't really think I'm going to take 
your word for it, do you? ;) )

> Because there's no documentation. Indeed, one Stack Overflow commenter
> helpfully commented that "there SHOULD be no documentation, because the
> source code is the documentation". No, random Internet user, the source
> code is not and will never be the documentation. Because the source code
> gives you the *implementation* not the *interface*.
> 
> Then again, when your entire extensibility platform is fundamentally
> based on purposely breaking encapsulation to start with...

Um, no, it's based on extending encapsulation in an OO way, as I 
understand it.  It's somewhat like using DITA specializations, or 
extending an object class in a directory service.

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I think the thing that really drove it home was that the other day I 
> happened to fire up an old VM that's running Firefox 5. It was *so much* 
> faster! I could actually look at Google Maps in *realtime*! Not with a 
> 30-second pause every time I scroll or zoom.

Do you honestly think that if that were common, people wouldn't have
noticed? (I just tested google maps with firefox, and they worked just
fine in real-time, with no lagginess of to speak of.)

Or is this another one of your exaggerations, where you express
estimations with two orders of magnitude of exaggeration?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 18/03/2015 05:41 PM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> I think the thing that really drove it home was that the other day I
>> happened to fire up an old VM that's running Firefox 5. It was *so much*
>> faster! I could actually look at Google Maps in *realtime*! Not with a
>> 30-second pause every time I scroll or zoom.
>
> Do you honestly think that if that were common, people wouldn't have
> noticed? (I just tested google maps with firefox, and they worked just
> fine in real-time, with no lagginess of to speak of.)
>
> Or is this another one of your exaggerations, where you express
> estimations with two orders of magnitude of exaggeration?

If it were just my home PC, I'd probably assume that something is wrong 
with my PC. Given that the PC at work does the exact same thing... and 
other people in the office have also mentioned it and switched 
browsers... I suspect it's not just me.

(Plus the fact that an older version of Firefox runs drastically faster. 
In a VM, which is typically slower...)

Maybe 30 seconds is an exaggeration. When you make a mouse gesture, and 
nothing visible happens for multiple seconds afterwards, it sure *feels* 
like several eternities.

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