Bug#649770: gnome-panel: no way to remove dynamical space around clock applet

[Witold Baryluk]

On 11-23 22:23, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 10:10:38PM +0100, Witold Baryluk wrote:
> > Package: gnome-panel
> > Version: 3.2.1-1
> > Severity: normal
> > 
> > Hi.
> > 
> > Clock applet is currently centered on panel, but it looks
> > that actually around applet is some kind of invisible applet / item,
> > which just changes width acording how other elements
> > takes space.
> > 
> > You can move around it, but moving around other applets
> > and elements. But you cannot remove them, configure or add them.
> > 
> > One should be able to Alt-Right-Click on this space and show
> > Move and Remove from panel in context menu.
> 
> You can position a widget left, center, or right on the panel. It's
> not possible to place an applet at a freely-chosen position. I guess
> this is what you think to be a problem here[1].
> 
> [1] I guess we all know that gnome-panel 2.X was horribly broken
>     WRT applet placement, at least for everyone using screens of
>     multiple resolutions.


I see. So essentially there are 3 groups now, left, center and right,
and you can place applet in one of them, and change order of applets
in each group.

It may look like nice improvement, but I know some people which was actually
happy and exploited old behaviour to freelly lay out activators
and applets in ways which are currently impossible to do.
Like increasing inter-activator space.

I also had multiple groups of activators, now I can/must have only 3.
Separator applet allows only for small space beetwen groups,
and is almost useless (and additionally is not transparent,
and is not configurable to have variable width). This applet should
be improved to allow this. This way we can have better managment
of activators placement, but still have good behaviour
with respect to left/center/right alignment as well changing resolution
of screen, makeing it more fluid.

Maybe 'Move' in context menu should be changed to something different,
to prevent confusion?

Regards,
Witek


-- 
Witold Baryluk