Ubuntu Wiki

• Launchpad Entry: mid-jaunty-launcer

• Created: Monday 05 January 2009

• Contributors: Michael Casadevall, Steve Kowalik, Emmet Hikory

• Packages affected:

Summary

Kourou is a great launcher, but loses some features, such as displaying backgrounds. This specification is to discuss what features to implement in Kourou, as well as other launcher ideas we should develop.

Release Note

Users may now set background images on Ubuntu MID, and the launcher now has configurable menus and improved finger navigation support.

Rationale

Kourou's functionality isn't complete and should be improved and finished in other places

Use Cases

• Alice uses Ubuntu Mobile, and uses Kourou to access all the applications on the device.

Design

Possible Alternatives

• Use UNR launcher? (likely not possible since there is a lot of HW out there not having GL and/or composite support)
• Matchbox panel could be considered as a replacement, it's usage model is far from being intuituve though.
• UNR is already going to need to create a GTK+ frontend for their launcher. MID can steal that/the backend. The UNR launcher is well-tested/already-deployed.

Kourou enhancement brainstorming

• Add finger scrolling
• Replace Marquee category selections
• Add "search for application" feature ?
• New "favorites" menu category
• Startup effects/notification
• Icon reordering by finger (drag/drop support)
• Zoom in/out
• Add configurable icon/fontsize gconf options
• Inspect possible other input methods (jogdial, blackberry pebble, virtua onscreen trackball ...)
• Use a context menu on longtouch events for "hide", "move", "delete" etc.

• Add additional view modes, i.e. "ListView"

• Icons that show state (like the Dates icon showing current date?)#
• possibly some sorta file view?
• Implement a "Recently used" category for documents

Selected Final Feature List

• Background Image support
• Finger Scrolling

• StartupNotification support

• Menu Editing

Implementation

UI Changes

TBD

Code Changes

TBD

Test/Demo Plan

Add a kourou-specific testcase that exercises the 4 selected feature improvements to the TestCases for image testing, and test alongside milestone image testing.

Unresolved issues

• Kourou currently doesn't support wallpaper setting due to a bug in GtkIconview (no widget transparency), either GtkIconview needs fixing or Kourou needs to use a table of buttons or similar.

• Would it help to have a Gtk front-end to the UNR launcher? A lot of time and effort (with *lots* of testing) has already gone into the codebase. A new front-end would not be difficult.

BoF agenda and discussion

Mobile MID Launcher for Jaunty

Kourou is a great launcher, but loses some features, such as displaying backgrounds. This specification is too discuss what features to implement in Kourou, as well as other launcher ideas we should develop.

• Use UNR launcher? (likely not possible since there is a lot of HW out there not having GL and/or composite support)
  • - Would it help to have a Gtk front-end to the UNR launcher? A lot of time and effort (with *lots* of testing) has already gone into the codebase. A new front-end would not be difficult.

• Kourou currently doesn't support wallpaper setting due to a bug in GtkIconview (no widget transparency), either GtkIconview needs fixing or Kourou needs to use a table of buttons or similar.

• Matchbox panel could be considered as a replacement, it's usage model is far from being intuituve though.

Kourou enhancement brainstorming

• Add finger scrolling
• Replace Marquee category selections
• Add "search for application" feature ?
• New "favorites" menu category
• Startup effects/notification
• Icon reordering by finger (drag/drop support)
• Zoom in/out
• Add configurable icon/fontsize gconf options
• Inspect possible other input methods (jogdial, blackberry pebble, virtua onscreen trackball ...)
• Use a context menu on longtouch events for "hide", "move", "delete" etc.

• Add additional view modes, i.e. "ListView"

• Icons that show state (like the Dates icon showing current date?)#
• possibly some sorta file view?
• Implement a "Recently used" category for documents

UNR is already going to need to create a GTK+ frontend for their launcher. MID can steal that/the backend. The UNR launcher is well-tested/already-deployed.

CategorySpec