Re: [Ayatana] New style of Minimize button for Natty

[Carl Simpson <cwd.simpson@xxxxxxxxx>]

Canonical has never maintained GNOME Panel, so the fact that it even works now is entirely due to the miracle of collaboration, rather than Ubuntu's or Canonical's specific efforts.  That'll continue to be how it all works in the future; don't panic.  There are enough people out there looking at Shell and Unity in utter disbelief, that GNOME Panel wont go away for a long time, I don't think.

If you want to continue to support GNOME Panel, and make sure that a competent GNOME Panel is shipped in Ubuntu in future, that's a separate project that isn't part of the debate regarding how Unity should be done.  I'm not sure if there's a well formed community, yet, emerging around the all-too-common desire to keep GNOME Panel up and running- to give you the lame hand-off response: you might consider spearheading such an effort.

As for filing the bug…  if you're not sure, write it up with Ubuntu.  The developers there will soon figure out if it's theirs, or something for upstream, wherever “upstream” works out to be, for the Panel, in future.

As for configurability?  Get writing up those ideas, and push for them!  Resizable Sprinboard got in for Natty because someone who wanted it pushed for it, and someone who agreed made it happen (Andrea Azzarone, I think).

There are some things you might not bother wasting your effort on, however, such as, “Move the Springboard to a different screen edge.”  The word is in on this; it stays on the left (sorry).  There are some ways in which Unity is going to be limited.  It can't be everything to everyone.