SugarShellRefactoring

Introduction

For Update.2, we intend to reorganize parts of the UI of the home view and the frame.

See Designs/Activity_Management and Designs/Frame for explanation of these changes.

Below is a very loose brainstorm of the action items to perform for Update.2. We need to devote more thinking and discussion so the list "solidifies" a bit.

Action items

Infrastructure

• Split the library into separate modules. sugar-base, sugar-graphics, sugar-activity.
• Create personal git repositories.
• Add sugar.modules to jhbuild upstream and build from there. Document how to setup jhbuild.
• Switch to matchbox-2 (if it works well enough).
• Move to goocanvas (?)
• Make the shell model a singleton accessible from anywhere inside the shell. (?)
• HTray and VTray inherit from gtk.Box, but store its children in a different structure so many methods in the base class doesn't work. Not sure what we can do here.

Frame

• Move to gtk only.
• Add devices to the bottom frame.
• Add running activities to the top frame.
• Add clipboard to the left frame.
• Add zoom levels to the top frame.
• Add buddies to the right frame.
• Implement notifications.
• Implement buddies palette.
• Implement devices palette.
• Implement clipboard palette.
• Implement activity palette.
• Implement journal palette.
• Show the frame during activity switching.

Home view

• Investigate using goocanvas.
• Implement dynamic activity ring.
• Implement activity palettes.
• Implement xo palette.
• Add toolbar.

Activity list

• Use goocanvas?
• Generic list "widget"?

Journal

• Move the journal into the shell process.

Misc

• Make the activity registry private to the shell.
• Get rid of the custom X properties to facilitate porting (startup-notification? icon set by the activity?)