Ubuntu's HUD in Xubuntu rationale.

What is HUD?

• HUD its a new way, introduced by Ubuntu developers, to search and use most, if not all, of the available menu options internals to a program that has provided Ubuntu's HUD with it.

Does it change the standard XFCE workflow?

• HUD doesn't replace the standard menu options neither the standard way of manually searching through several options, it will search those options only if the user choose to launch it. In this manner HUD won't replace the standard workflow of XFCE users.

Why is it relevant to Xubuntu Users?

• As the pace of Ubuntu's development increases more and more characteristics of it are leaving the rest of the flavors behind. It's of consideration that Xubuntu, as its name probably resembles, share some characteristics with the standard Ubuntu distribution, by this, there should be more integration from Xubuntu into the innovations that are being created. In this category, HUD, its an interesting tool that, while not being extremely intrusive, generates some new and non-standard way of user interaction. In a secondary category we should consider what separates Xubuntu from all other XFCE based distributions, and besides the great an renowned stability we have, giving modern computers great speed and a traditional desktop that contents the most resilient users from change, there is little that has been done that its innovative and impacting. Getting HUD to work inside Xubuntu would create this, and even more when most of the work of HUD its being already done by Ubuntu's developers, we should simple develop a search interface.

Who would benefit from this integration?

• From a desktop point of view, HUD for Xubuntu should probably be called "HUD for many", work in this integration should be able to be of interest of all XFCE compliant distributions, probably even LXDE and Gnome based distributions, of course all those that would support the HUD service. In the aspect of User Interaction HUD would provide a better way of accessing menu's options for users with accessibility needs, providing an easier way of finding deep menu options.

What its needed for this integration?

• From a programmer point of view, which I'm not, HUD developers would provide a libhud-client software that should be able to query menus and return parseable results. This should mean that whoever takes the development would have to "simply" create this query interface.

What characteristics should HUD for Xubuntu have?

• An option in the Settings Manager to turn it on and off.
• Visual integration with the gtk themes
• Font controls (to increase usability by special need users)
• Position of "poping up" control
• HUD shortcuts should be the same as in mainbuntu ("alt" key)