[Wishlist] - What would you like to see in future releases?

Development Discussion
#62
  1. I often work with two workspaces at the same time (like editing a document in one and having another as reference in a second workspace), so I need to quickly switch between them. Having to drop the mouse to use a combination of keys is too slow for me, that’s why I used the workspace applet in a convenient position where I can just give a big movement to the mouse and move the wheel without looking (well, when it works, I’ll have to check if a small issue I had in 17.04 has been fixed in 17.10). The way it’s done (with an extension) on GNOME is really convenient, it would be great to be able to have hot corners / sides in MATE without Compiz.

(As for dynamic workspaces, I can understand this. When I first tried GNOME 3 a few years ago, I found this weird and set a fixed number. But after using them more these last monthes, it’s surprisingly efficient.)

  1. But Compiz sucks… :frowning:

  2. Really? I have an Ubuntu MATE 17.10 in a VM that is up to date, I checked before posting and selecting multiple dirs and pressing F2 just did nothing. EDIT: just checked again and it indeed works when choosing “rename” from the context menu. The hotkey (F2) doesn’t work when several dirs/files are selected. Might be a bug?

#63

(Just noticed that i didn’t reply to your message with my last one, so not sure if you saw the issue at the end about mass renaming.)

5 I have spoken to several digital artists, I understand what they need and am trying to organise this work upstream.

Have you started looking into this, checked what can be done from MATE’s perspective and such?

I’m currently looking into the solutions to properly use color management on MATE. I’ve found in the Arch wiki that there exists an independant color daemon (xiccd) that provides access to colord to DEs that don’t have one. It seems to work, I can apply an ICC profile to my screen using colord in command line (colormgr). So far, I only miss a GUI to handle profiles more easily. Not sure if one exists that is independant of an existing DE like GNOME / KDE.

#64

note that even in 16.10 you can move applications easily between workspaces.

make the appication to move the “active” window. a tiny version of it will appear in the workspace selection bar. just grab it with the mouse and put it in the workspace where you want to use it.

#65

Yes. But for easy handling, I put the workspace switcher in the top roght. And to waste less, space, I use it as a grid (2 × 2). In this configuration, the windows are very tiny. :wink:

#66

Hi, I also use pyrenamer by long time. Today I’m using this script and it’s great

#67

I’m still hoping for a customizable Caja toolbar, or at least a “New Folder” button added to it.

#68

Thanks for the tip. I might give it a try but currently, I’m simply waiting for Ubuntu MATE 17.10 which has the built-in option. As it’s out in about a month, I can wait a bit. :wink:

#69

If you don’t want to wait, the developer has a PPA for caja rename.

2 Likes
#70

Every once in a while I get the inspiration to post another want so here goes. :slight_smile:

In the past, almost every app and widget in Gnome2 remembered its window size. Now only a handful do. For example, I have to use compiz Window Rules so I don’t have to resize the Weather applet radar map and forecast every time I open it. That wasn’t true in the past.

With the complete move to GTK3 I feel like such subtle advantages are now lost forever. :cry: All comments welcome.

2 Likes
#71

2 posts were split to a new topic

#73

I have various things I would love to see in future releases (I think I can’t write everything right now, just those what came in my mind):

Wayland support. Wayland is the future, and the present, since Wayland 1.0 released in october 2012. (5 years ago already!)

Better HiDPI support.

Newer software releases backported to Ubuntu, like newer LibreOffice. At least bugfix releases. I don’t see any reason, to not update LOo 5.3.1 to 5.3.6 on 17.04 for example.

Some MATE programs are behind in quality compared to its Gnome counterpart, or there is no alternative at all. Nautilus is looks much better and handles icons better too, gnucharmap also looks and works better, Geary doesn’t have alternative at all, etc.

Maybe a bit too futuristic, but MATE mobile is something I would love to see.
Currently there is only Plasma mobile, but IMHO that looks horrible. I don’t like KDE’s design, but that’s even uglier than regular KDE stuffs.

Integrate menus, window buttons and the top bar into one single bar, like on Unity.

An audio input/output panel, where I could assign every app separately to every output, and I could use two outputs parallel. Like play music on HDMI, while playing with a game using the notebooks internal speakers.

An improved Plank (I detailed it on a separate discussion)

An improved alt+tab panel. Currently it has only tiny icons, and nothing more.

When I minimize a window, there is a weird frame collapsing animation.
delet it.

Improved multi monitor support.
For example the ability to set default launch display for every program. fixed to a specific display, or the last display where it was used or the display where the mouse were when the program were launched.

An improved advanced menu. The current looks and feels outdated, compared to, for example, Unity’s dashboard. A Synapse equivalent search panel integrated into this menu could be also useful.

On the top menu the indicators and icons are full height, so they fill the vertical space of the panel itself where they are. I really really dislike this. Icons should have use around 75-80% of the available space at maximum.

When I click to the clock, then the calendar appears, when I click to a different place, it doesn’t disappears.

Ambient MATE Dark theme looks a bit bad with LibreOffice. for example the UI is full with light grey outlines with dark grey background. Doesn’t looks that good.

#74

I would like to see a full-screen menu like in GNOME and KDE.

#75

Newer software releases backported to Ubuntu, like newer LibreOffice. At least bugfix releases. I don’t see any reason, to not update LOo 5.3.1 to 5.3.6 on 17.04 for example.

The backports are handled by the Ubuntu team rather than the variants like Ubuntu MATE, so if you want newer versions, you’d have to open a bug report/wishlist on Launchpad, asking here won’t do much.

When not available in backports, you have the possibility to use PPAs. There’s one from the LibreOffice team which provides up-to-date packages. The LibreOffice Fresh PPA provides the current stable version (5.4.1.2 currently on Ubuntu 17.04).

Some MATE programs are behind in quality compared to its Gnome counterpart, […] Geary doesn’t have alternative at all, etc.

Geary was originally made for elementaryOS but it looks like development has continued for GNOME. I’m not sure it’s part of the official GNOME apps.
Anyway, you can install it with no problem on Ubuntu MATE, though you’ll have to create a dedicated password if you want to use a GMail account (I guess it can use the Online Accounts feature on GNOME to automate this?).

That being said, it’s debatable as if it should be used as the default e-mail client on Ubuntu MATE instead of Thunderbird. I think there was a survey a few weeks ago on the topic of default apps somewhere on the forum.

#76

There are three mayor issues I’ve had so far:

  1. Sometimes the screen lock does not have the focus on the password textbox, and I cannot get it to focus, so I can’t type the password. I have to click on Switch User and then I can enter the password. It’s quite annoying.
  2. Caja takes a long time to show the icons when I open a folder with lots of files, when other file managers show the icons instantly. Caja shouldn’t wait until all the thumbnails are loaded to show the icons.
  3. When I try to open the Downloads folder from Firefox, Firefox crashes.

Another thing missing is a clipboard manager that runs on GTK+ 3 and is maintained. Xfce has Clipman but it doesn’t work with MATE. Currently I’m using Parcellite, which is OK but it’s not going to work when eventually MATE moves to Wayland.

Also, I’d love Marco to have some animations when opening/maximizing/closing windows, like Gnome. Compiz is dead and Compton causes too many issues since it’s not a window manager.

#77

I’d say that Compiz works just fine with MATE, if that’s the kind of thing you like. The project is certainly messy and divided, but far from dead. I’m personally a fan of Marco. I don’t use Compton.

As soon as we can give Marco its very own compositing superpowers (most likely using Epoxy), we can get rid of Compton (although as long as it works, you can always choose to install it). In the meantime, Compiz is the de facto GL compositor/window manager.

Regarding your comment, it seems like Marco has animations for minimizing windows, but I don’t see any for maximizing/closing. Shouldn’t be too hard to add. The animations, however, are wireframey, not fluid and shiny like in Compiz (that’s why we have Compiz ;))

Edit: in thinking about it, animations for minimizing windows are necessary for usability (if the window just disappears, it might cause confusion as to whether your window is closed). Opening, maximizing, closing: those don’t need the animation that much, as the window already visibly performs the action. Opening: now you see the window; closing: now you don’t; maximizing: window was small, now bigger.

4 Likes
#78

Hi @vkareh, That’s a great usability analysis and if you will be active in a compositing Marco I consider this a golden opportunity to mention this.

Some of us prolific compiz users run it for one main thing - the excellent Enhanced Zoom Desktop it has. I know it’s my #1 reason for compiz because nothing compares and it has been endorsed by folks like Jonathan Nadeau many times over the years.

It works so easily. A single key and mouse wheel. I’d love to see it in a compositing Marco! :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#79

@Bill_MI, I’ve used that plugin before and I agree that it’s quite wonderful. I’m wondering if once Marco does GL compositing, we can provide this functionality through a separate program. This would effectively make ezoom independent of its window manager, as long as the wm supports GL. Not sure about the feasibility of that, but I might start exploring that avenue.

It also means that development can happen simultaneously and independently of the GL compositing, especially if it would work under Compton.

FWIW, the latest release of Marco supports third-party apps having the correct type of key/mouse bindings (<Super>MouseButton).

2 Likes
#80

I’m using Clipit with Mate right now and tried Diodon with 17.10 beta. Both work just fine for me.

#81

The ability to add easily resizable empty space to the panel immediately after a Window List.

Edit: Output volume set in mate-volume-control not to be reset by raising or lowering the volume using the keyboard keys (without using the GUI).

#82

Ouroumov, about Opensnitch I can say the authour seems to be extremely active since a couple of weeks : there is certainly a new version…
(now, I am troying to open another thread because being a minimal user, I can’t manage to compile this version…)