Page 1 of 1

think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:52 am
by vayth
or maybe some 3rd party/optional like KDE's Appmenu runner? or maybe it's something I miss that already exist?

just curious, since that's the only thing I miss from unity.. :roll:

Re: think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 2:21 pm
by viking777
Do you really mean the HUD? :shock: I use Unity every minute that I can, I'm using it now, and I love it, but even as a confirmed fan I can find no earthly use for a HUD, and it is not for the want of trying, I have spent hours staring at the thing thinking "What on earth can I do with this?" but I never get an answer. Are you sure you don't mean the Dash? That is useful right enough (provided you disable the Amazon search results :evil: ), but not particularly more useful than the Cinnamon menu. What really makes Unity so good is the launcher, and more specifically the launcher quicklists. But I must say even that could be dramatically improved by reinstating the 'Dodge Windows' option the removal of which must count as the biggest own goal in the history of Linux.

Re: think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:17 am
by vayth
well, it came to me when I was trying libre office. since I'm used to ribbon and haven't touch old menu style, I think it would help to have a HUD with formatting or something.
although, the only thing I can think of is for office and other heavy menu oriented.. it's rather useless with something like browser.
and, yeah, Dash would be awesome too..

launcher... well, it's a bit hard to customize when I used 12.04 (having to edit .desktop and all. maybe it's just me who was unaware of the easy way if there's any), and look so.. square block.. a border.. I admit that quicklist is interesting, but I prefer cairo dock or something as I use in my mint for that..

Re: think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 8:03 am
by viking777
I see your point, but my problem with the Hud is that it can never replace menus for me because it requires you to remember what is in a particular programs menus before you can search for it - my memory is not good enough for that! The most heavily menued program I use regularly is Abiword, in order to search for an Abiword menu item in the Hud I first have to search through Abiword's menus to see what it is I want to find and then type it into the Hud. When I do that it works, certainly, but it all seems kind of pointless as I could have just clicked that menu item when I first found it. There is no way I will - ever - remember all the menu items in Abiword so if the menus disappeared (and I think that is what Canonical are looking at) my only option would be to write them all down like I do for the command line - or use another desktop environment. The whole idea just doesn't make sense to me.

As for it landing on Cinnamon, I wouldn't think it is on the horizon, but you should never say never :)

Re: think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 8:50 am
by Dngrsone
Viking777, I am imagining a terrible yet elegant solution for your problem. Yet implementation would be difficult, I think-- have some form of key word list, such as that used by WordPress, where most used words (or in your case, commands) show larger than the litle used ones and have that overlay the background on your desktop.

Re: think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 8:57 am
by viking777
I appreciate you thinking of me Dngrsone, but as yet I have no need of such a solution, the menus are still there and I can still look through them. Should they ever disappear for good I think just not using Unity would be an easier solution. A shame because I like it, but without menus afaiac Unity would be dead. Luckily Cinnamon is a pretty good alternative and has no plans to remove menus that I am aware of. :)

Re: think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 9:32 am
by tdockery97
@viking777: Fortunately there are plenty of talented individuals out there that are willing to provide us with nifty items such as putting the global menu back into things like LibreOffice, Abiword, and such.

And by the way, depending on which verstion of launcher you are using, there is a fix for the launcher dodging windows. It even worked in the latest development version until a few days ago. I'm sure they'll catch up with it again soon.

Re: think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 9:43 am
by dee.
Isn't the HUD closely integrated with Unity?

Re: think HUD will ever land on cinnamon?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 10:19 am
by viking777
And by the way, depending on which verstion of launcher you are using, there is a fix for the launcher dodging windows. It even worked in the latest development version until a few days ago. I'm sure they'll catch up with it again soon.
Tell you what Todd, if you know something that I don't about this I would dearly love you to share it with me. I only know of 2 ppa projects that supposedly restore this behaviour, unity-revamped which works with dual monitors but doesn't work with Ubuntu 12.10 and unity-dodge-windows which works with 12.10 but not with dual monitors. I have both 12.10 and dual monitors and therefore still have no solution that works for me, I would love to find one is you know something different.