gnome 2.24 & 2.26 roadmap: what features you looking forward to?

[madjr]

Basically the future of Ubuntu is written here (or at least 70% of it)

so what features you think will be interesting or help improve gnome in a big way?

maybe some of these features will have a bigger overall impact than we can imagine right now.

Do you think the gnome devs are heading in the right direction?

any particular aspect you think needs major work?

here are the features for 12 month development
http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap

GNOME 2.24

For Users

Artwork

* New GNOME default wallpapers
* Dark widget theme
* Flat widget theme
* Compact widget theme for small screens
* Provide color variations on some of the existing themes
* Initial set of 256x256 icons
* Nicer GNOME Panel icons
* Update outdated desktop emblems
* Convert more applications to use names from the icon-spec

Cheese

*

OpenGL backend and new effects
* Improved integration with the desktop
* Usability improvements
* Data synchronisation

Deskbar Applet

* Capuchin support: easy download of additional plugins from internet
* Performance improvements
* Improved del.ico.us support
* Support for Firefox 3

Evince Document Viewer

*

Annotations support (Google Summer of Code 2007)
* Performance improvements
* User interface improvements:
o Progress feedback when loading a remote file
o Progress feedback when printing
o More intuitive sidebar pages
*

Improved accessibility support (GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility)

Epiphany Web Browser

*

Migration to WebKit

Evolution Groupware

* Unified Account Management
*

Exchange 2007 support (Pending on licensing resolution)
* Windows support for Evolution
* Improved stability and protocol usage (IMAP+Exchange)
* Disk summary (Means very less memory consumption)
* Custom header support while sending mails
* New Bonobo-less composer for Evolution

Eye of GNOME Image Viewer

* PNG metadata support (XMP and color profiles)
* Performance improvements
* Set of default plugins
* UI polishing based on users' feedback
* Migration to gio/vfs

File Roller Archive Manager

* Migration to gio/vfs

Gedit Text Editor

* Improved startup time
* Migration to gio/gvfs

GNOME Control Center

* New screen resolution settings with support for XRandR 1.2/multihead
* Migration to gio/gvfs
* Improved themes/thumbnails handling

GNOME Calculator

*

Improved Q&A and bug fixes
* GCalctool website

GNOME Desktop (libgnome-desktop)

* API for randr management
*

Deprecate GnomeDesktopItem, replace it with a proper implementation in GTK+
* Move docs to GNOME User Guide
* Deprecate all icons which are not used anymore

GNOME Developer Docs

*

Accessibility Guide for Developers (GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility)
* Updated GNOME Documentation Style Guide (to be renamed to GNOME Style Guide) to reflect current technologies and trends
o Revised terminology recommendations

GNOME Games

* General:
o Online highscores
* Aisleriot
o Theming: backgrounds and card localisation
o Game layout improvements (ex. adapting to smaller screen size)
o Keyboard dealing for all games
o Misc game improvements
* Chess
o Use of libgames-support for Python games
o Split the GGZ GUI code out of glChess
* Gnometris
o Performance fixes on new theme
o Graphical indication of rotation point and direction
* Robots
o Resizeable/translateable robots
* Sudoku
o Support for hand-edited puzzles
o Support for import/export puzzles
o Puzzle generation performance improvements

GNOME Keyboard Handling (libgnomekbd)

* User interface for choosing layouts not only per-country but also per-language

GNOME Keyring

* Allow Seahorse to manage encryption keys and certificates
* Complete the PKCS#11 integration work
* Support for encryption key unlock and usage constraints (such as timeouts and prompts)

GNOME Media

*

Better integration with PulseAudio
* Migration to gio/gvfs
* Improved gstreamer-properties and gnome-audio-profiles-editor (similar to Banshee profiles)
* Disable GNOME-CD/CDDBSlave/VUMeter by default

GNOME On-screen Keyboard

* Possible migration to Python

GNOME Panel

* Positioning fixes of applets when Panel size changes
* Support for setting menubar layout, not only the items in the Applications menu
* Integration with new GNOME Session Manager

GNOME Power Manager

* Improvements on backlight brightness control
* Allow changing the backlights of all monitors

GNOME Session Manager

* Better integration with Autostart
* More flexibility and convenience for distributors on defining their default session applications
* D-Bus API for log out/reboot/shutdown (with save session) operations

GNOME Terminal

*

Port to GtkUIManager

GNOME Utils

* Baobab
o Migration to gio/gvfs
* Dictionary
o Support for local files (dict and possibly stardict)
o Custom definitions to a local database
o Wikipedia support
o Show and select sources from the sidebar
* GFloppy
o Replace with the GNOME Formatter, a true media formatter
* Screenshot
o Desktop area grabbing
o Support actions: save, copy to clipboard, and open with
o

Switch save dialog to a pure GtkFileChooser
o Rewrite the capture logic and make it work properly under Compiz
o Migration to gio/gvfs
* System Log Viewer
o Plugin system to handle different log sources

HTTP stack (libsoup)

* Cookies
* Caching
* Better proxy support / use GConf proxy information
* Gnome Keyring integration
* Content-Encoding
* Better SSL support

Libwnck Window Management Library

* Better integration with Compiz and other window managers
* API stabilization work
* Unified handling virtual desktops and viewports the same way
* Improved developer docs

Nautilus File Manager

* Column-wise view
* Tabbed interface
* Key-binding support for Nautilus extensions

Orca Screen Reader

* Java platform support
*

OpenOffice enhancements and improvements
* Thunderbird enhancements and improvements
* Enhancements for people with low vision
* Better support for control via braille devices
* Improved developer documentation
*

Accessible install for OpenSolaris

Seahorse Encryption Keys Manager

* Evolution integration (e-d-s integration, auto-contact creation, photo ID synchronization)
* Management of gnome-keyring encryption keys and certificates
* Python bindings for libcryptui
* Refreshed icons

Soundjuicer Audio CD Extractor

* User interface improvements
* Migration to libmusicbrainz3

Tomboy Notes

* Support for attachments, embedded images, etc.
* Cross-platform improvements

Totem Movie Player

* Better DVB support
* Migration to gio/vfs

Vinagre Remote Desktop Client

* Improved bookmarking
o Allow folders
o Automatically show Avahi-discovered machines
o Import/Export bookmarks
* Panel applet: quick access to bookmarked and avahi-discovered connections
* Tabbed interface
* Better fullscreen mode
* Send custom keys (like Ctrl-Alt-Del) to the server
* Control the properties of a connection (like depth color, read-only mode, etc)

Vino Desktop Remote Access

* Support for reverse connections
* Support for connection logging
* Ability to choose which interface to listen to

Zenity

* Multi-task support for progressbar dialog
* Support for setting label names
* Improvements on notification icon

For Developers

Anjuta Integrated Development Environment

*

Improvements on GtkSourceView-based editor
* Easy start-up wizard
* Improved program execution interface
* Improved build plugin
* Port GTK+ 2.10 deprecated APIs
* Migration to gio/gvfs

Gail

* Move Gail into GTK+

Glade User Interface Designer

* New parser, allows plugin backends to define widget-class level definitions of the XML format
* Allow plugins to define editors for custom properties
*

Support for both formats libglade/GtkBuilder, with UI feedback and error summaries regarding incompatibilities in conversions
* Support targeting of specific toolkit versions
* New builder features
o

Support for GtkLabel attributes property with editor
o

Integration of GtkUIManager and GtkActions
o

Integration of GtkSizeGroup
o

Integration of GtkListStore/GtkTreeStore editors
o

Integration of GtkTreeView editor (packing of columns and cell renderers)

GVFS

*

Fix regressions introduced by the transition from GnomeVFS
* Support for Proxy Auto-configuration (PAC)
* Configure options for mount points
* Possible emblems support on gio/gvfs level

Pango

*

Merge all shapers with the ones from Qt in HarfBuzz
*

Remove all script shapers, add a single HarfBuzz shaper

For Everyone

Infrastructure

*

Decide on a new Distributed Version Control System (This is not about switching, just deciding and understanding implications)
* Move buildbot master to elsewhere
* Add loads more buildbots (needs changes in buildbot)
* Setup new GNOME website on GNOME servers, if ready
* Upgrade svn.gnome.org to SVN 1.4+ and setup readonly SVN mirror on container
* Complete move of sysadmin.gnome.org content to the wiki
* Document everything; policies, servers, etc
* Setup slave DNS server on socket
* Upgrade socket, progress to new Ubuntu LTS

Proposed modules

Keep in mind that there's no guarantee that the proposed modules will actually be integrated into GNOME.

*

Empathy: a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets.
*

Conduit: a synchronization architecture for the GNOME desktop.
*

Hamster: a time tracking applet for the GNOME desktop.


===========================================


GNOME 2.26

For Users

Evolution Groupware

* IMAP relook/revamp
* More plugin loaders
*

WebKit or GtkMoz* integration
* Full fledged logging support

GNOME Control Center

* Support for launching arbitrary commands via keybindings

GNOME Media

*

Replace gnome-volume-control with a PulseAudio mixer, and/or a higher-level device control UI

GNOME Power Manager

*

Better ConsoleKit and PolicyKit integration

Gucharmap

* Ability to print charts of characters with pangocairo

Nautilus File Manager

* Toolbar editor
* Improved list view interaction

Seahorse Encryption Keys Manager

* Possibly a Pidgin/Telepathy encryption plugin
* Digitally signed documents in Evince

Tomboy Notes

* Complete cross-platform support

Vinagre Remote Desktop Client

* Support for RDP (Microsoft Terminal Services) connections

Vino Desktop Remote Access

* Ability to disable wallpaper

For Developers

Anjuta Integrated Development Environment

* New Symbol database plugin
* Improved symbol autocompletion
* Better Glade integration
* Automated UI testing
* Git plugin

[techrush]

Surprised this hasnt picked up more replies so far as this is -literally- the future direction ubuntu will be headed as a gnome based distro. There seems to be a pretty common misconception that most of the changes and new things in ubuntu are contruibuted by canonical itself. In reality its mostly coming from upstream projects like gnome and openoffice.org.

Anyways it looks like a lot of small refinements that will make the gnome experience better overall. The tabbed interface for nautilus did catch my eye. Will be interesting to see how they implement it.

[FuturePilot]

Looks like they are trying to make the DE even more integrated which is great. I'm looking forward to the completion of the GVFS migration, better PulseAudio support/integration, Webkit, and Nautilus tabs and column views. And hopefully maybe a Restore from Trash feature.
Looks like some good stuff.

[nrs]

All good, nothing in particular.

[yatt]

While I didn't read the whole thing (long changelogs are long), but tabbed browsing in Nautilus is the only thing that really stood out.

What I would like to see is a feature where if you hold a dragged item over a open folder, it opens that folder.

EDIT: It seems they are expanding there set of default themes, which I like the sounds of too. Particularly repeating the same theme in several colors. This is something I have wished most distros would do for a while.

[swoll1980]

WOW new wallpapers!! I can't wait!!!!111!one

[D-EJ915]

WOW new wallpapers!! I can't wait!!!!111!one

gnome always has had rather lackluster wallpapers compared to KDE, I think gnome's wallpaper support sucks compared to KDE in general, though. Hopefully they fix that, and that horrid new appearance crap.

[Sukarn]

Tabbed nautilus is what I'm looking forward to the most.

[graabein]

I'm still trying to configure xorg to have two separate xscreens and this caused my screen resolution to take a serious hit last night. I noticed that quite a few of the GNOME 2.18/Tango icons in the settings menu don't look good at all at minimum size. I hope some of the GNOME artists put time into completing one or two icon sets. Little things like these affect the overall feel of the DE...

I'm also anxious to try Nautilus with column view. Hope they improve the startup speed of it also. It should also be easier to clean up and decide what applications to launch filetypes with.

About time to fix the panel clock yes...


Update: I use PCManFM instead of Nautilus btw.

[days_of_ruin]

tabbed nautilus == WIN!