unity-design team mailing list archive

[Naba Kumar <naba.kumar@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen
<mikkel.kamstrup@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 09/22/2011 08:46 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
>>
>> Den 22. sep. 2011 20:40, skrev Alex Launi:
>>>
>>> Can someone explain why we think we want the ability to run rm directly from unity anyway? Is there a single person who wants this functionality who doesn't have a terminal open all of the time anyway?
>>
>> rm is a bad example. But being able to restart compiz using "compiz --replace" without opening a terminal and running "nohup compiz --replace" is a good reason to keep it around. Or to quickly open a root nautilus. (Which itself is an example of situations when it should not be necessary to run a command) Stuff like that.
>
> Just for historic reference: The Alt-F2 mode in Unity was added because there was a *major* uproar from users that it was gone, when we transitioned from the Gnome2 panel. So we added it back.
>
My original thought was about having the two be approached
consistently. The functionality of Alt-F2 is still useful, especially
when taking command parameters, like others have pointed. Even without
them, at least out of habit :).

Approaching the two by the user consistently, meaning not to think
what to use when launching "text editor", "gedit", "gedit ~/file.txt",
"gedit -s". All 4 is used to launch a text editor in varying ways, but
first 2 work with dash-search and last 3 work with current alt-f2
implementation.

One can divide the launches between "standard" vs "advanced" ways and
have 2 separate interfaces dealing with them - which is what is done
currently and is what others have pointed out.

But what is there to lose if the two are done through same interface -
without any lose of functionality of either? Some subtle difference
between the two can be brought in, such as like  joerlend suggested
with "~". Or, having no difference in the input, but instead
additional command-prefix completion is shown below (lens?) in
addition to the free text search results - such that input is both
treated as case insensitive free form search + case sensitive command
pre-fix search.

This will save some metal taxing on the users (note: it wasn't
difficult to pick before because I only had to choose alt-f2).

Thanks.

Regards,
-Naba