unity-dev team mailing list archive

["Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper" <vr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey all,

I work for VMware and have been a FOSS contributor for a long time outside
of my work for VMware. But one of the things I'm working on at VMware is
trying to get VMware Unity to play nicely with Ubuntu Unity (both 2D and 3D
DE's), and there's some challenges we have with this. I'm hoping that this
email will give us some solutions to the problems we're facing or at least
get some conversation going about how we might tackle these things.

For those unfamiliar with VMware Unity mode: VMware Unity mode lets you run
a Virtual Machine (VM) and integrate any windows you have open in that VM
with your host environment without having to display the entire guest VM
desktop. Here's a nice post by Christian Hammond (who also has been doing
FOSS work outside of VMware for a long time) that explains it more:
http://blog.chipx86.com/2008/04/02/workstation-65-beta-1-now-with-100-more-unity/And
here's an old video someone did of VMware Unity mode
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIApJMzGzDQ

Anyway, there are some things that just do not work right when our users
are running an Ubuntu Unity DE (2D and 3D) in a VM and want to enter VMware
Unity mode.

First, Ubuntu Unity removes application menus and displays them as part of
the top panel bar. Since we need to not show the top panel bar when we
enter VMware Unity mode to give an integrated experience, Ubuntu Unity
users are unable to access application menus when they're in VMware Unity
mode.

Second, Ubuntu Unity removes the application titlebar when a window is
maximized and instead integrates it into the top panel bar. Same as above,
since we need to hide the top panel bar in Ubuntu Unity when our users
enter VMware Unity, when our users maximize a window when they're in VMware
Unity mode, they lose their window titlebar and have no way to unmaximize
their window.

Third, when our users enter VMware Unity mode with an Ubuntu Unity DE VM,
we need to hide the left side dock/launcher bar.

I'm sure someone will question why we need to hide the top panel bar from
Ubuntu Unity when we enter VMware Unity mode. This comes back to giving our
users an integrated experience between their host and guest desktop
environments. If you already have a top panel bar in your host (as is the
case by default with Ubuntu and Mac OS X hosts, to just name 2), it's not a
good user experience to have two (or more, if you're using multiple VMs at
the same time in your host DE) top panel bars show up. The same reasoning
applies to why we need to hide the left side dock/launcher bar.

I guess my first question is how can we programmatically disable Ubuntu
Unity mode (specifically disable the application menu relocating, window
titlebar integration with the top panel bar, and disable the left side
dock/launcher bar) for our users when they want to enter VMware Unity mode
with an Ubuntu 12.04 VM? Is it possible to do so via gconftool or
dconf-tool or something else?

Is it possible to do this currently? Was Ubuntu Unity designed with the
thought that users might want to turn off elements of it without having to
logout and login again?

Thanks!

-- 
 -[ Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper   //  http://movingparts.net ]-
 -[ bash fun -> :(){ :|:&};:   //  Numbers 6:22-26 ]-