GNOME Roadmap Draft

The GNOME Roadmap

The GNOME Community Roadmap is a big-picture view of functionality we expect GNOME to include in short-term and long-term future. The roadmap is based on feedback from current GNOME developers and other community members.

The roadmap is organized into target groups: Users, Developers, Admins and Everyone in each target release. In the case of user-targeted plans, sometimes a change will not be user-visible but will nevertheless alter the user experience in some way.

This roadmap shows the ideas and hopes of GNOME contributors for the near future. However, GNOME is primarily a volunteer community that does time-based releases, as opposed to feature-based releases. Therefore, these changes will only happen for their target releases if the contributors have the necessary time and resources. If it needs more time, then the feature will be moved to the next 6 month release cycle. We hope this roadmap allows interested people to take part. The GNOME project relies heavily on your involvement.

To have access to the Roadmap of previous stable releases, go to RoadMap/Archive

To know more about our Roadmap process, go to RoadMap/ProcessBeforeGNOME3

GNOME 2.24

For Users

Artwork

• New GNOME default wallpapers
• Dark widget theme
• Flat widget theme
• Compact widget theme for small screens
• Provide color variations on some of the existing themes
• Initial set of 256x256 icons
• Nicer GNOME Panel icons
• Update outdated desktop emblems
• Convert more applications to use names from the icon-spec

Cheese

• OpenGL backend and new effects

• Improved integration with the desktop
• Usability improvements
• Data synchronisation

Deskbar Applet

• Capuchin support: easy download of additional plugins from internet
• Performance improvements
• Improved del.ico.us support
• Support for Firefox 3

Evince Document Viewer

• Annotations support (Google Summer of Code 2007)

• Performance improvements
• User interface improvements:
  • Progress feedback when loading a remote file
  • Progress feedback when printing
  • More intuitive sidebar pages

• Improved accessibility support (GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility)

Epiphany Web Browser

• Migration to WebKit

Evolution Groupware

• Unified Account Management

• Exchange 2007 support (Pending on licensing resolution)

• Windows support for Evolution
• Improved stability and protocol usage (IMAP+Exchange)
• Disk summary (Means very less memory consumption)
• Custom header support while sending mails
• New Bonobo-less composer for Evolution

Eye of GNOME Image Viewer

• PNG metadata support (XMP and color profiles)
• Performance improvements
• Set of default plugins
• UI polishing based on users' feedback
• Migration to gio/vfs

File Roller Archive Manager

• Migration to gio/vfs

Gedit Text Editor

• Improved startup time
• Migration to gio/gvfs

GNOME Control Center

• New screen resolution settings with support for XRandR 1.2/multihead
• Migration to gio/gvfs
• Improved themes/thumbnails handling

GNOME Calculator

• Improved Q&A and bug fixes

• GCalctool website

GNOME Desktop (libgnome-desktop)

• API for randr management

• Deprecate GnomeDesktopItem, replace it with a proper implementation in GTK+

• Move docs to GNOME User Guide
• Deprecate all icons which are not used anymore

GNOME Developer Docs

• Accessibility Guide for Developers (GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility)

• Updated GNOME Documentation Style Guide (to be renamed to GNOME Style Guide) to reflect current technologies and trends
  • Revised terminology recommendations

GNOME Games

• General:
  • Online highscores
• Aisleriot
  • Theming: backgrounds and card localisation
  • Game layout improvements (ex. adapting to smaller screen size)
  • Keyboard dealing for all games
  • Misc game improvements
• Chess
  • Use of libgames-support for Python games
  • Split the GGZ GUI code out of glChess
• Gnometris
  • Performance fixes on new theme
  • Graphical indication of rotation point and direction
• Robots
  • Resizeable/translateable robots
• Sudoku
  • Support for hand-edited puzzles
  • Support for import/export puzzles
  • Puzzle generation performance improvements

GNOME Keyboard Handling (libgnomekbd)

• User interface for choosing layouts not only per-country but also per-language

GNOME Keyring

• Allow Seahorse to manage encryption keys and certificates
• Complete the PKCS#11 integration work
• Support for encryption key unlock and usage constraints (such as timeouts and prompts)

GNOME Media

• Better integration with PulseAudio

• Migration to gio/gvfs
• Improved gstreamer-properties and gnome-audio-profiles-editor (similar to Banshee profiles)
• Disable GNOME-CD/CDDBSlave/VUMeter by default

GNOME On-screen Keyboard

• Possible migration to Python

GNOME Panel

• Positioning fixes of applets when Panel size changes
• Support for setting menubar layout, not only the items in the Applications menu
• Integration with new GNOME Session Manager

GNOME Power Manager

• Improvements on backlight brightness control
• Allow changing the backlights of all monitors

GNOME Session Manager

• Better integration with Autostart
• More flexibility and convenience for distributors on defining their default session applications
• D-Bus API for log out/reboot/shutdown (with save session) operations

GNOME Terminal

• Port to GtkUIManager

GNOME Utils

• Baobab
  • Migration to gio/gvfs
• Dictionary
  • Support for local files (dict and possibly stardict)
  • Custom definitions to a local database
  • Wikipedia support
  • Show and select sources from the sidebar
• GFloppy
  • Replace with the GNOME Formatter, a true media formatter
• Screenshot
  • Desktop area grabbing
  • Support actions: save, copy to clipboard, and open with

  • Switch save dialog to a pure GtkFileChooser

  • Rewrite the capture logic and make it work properly under Compiz
  • Migration to gio/gvfs
• System Log Viewer
  • Plugin system to handle different log sources

HTTP stack (libsoup)

• Cookies
• Caching
• Better proxy support / use GConf proxy information
• Gnome Keyring integration
• Content-Encoding
• Better SSL support

Libwnck Window Management Library

• Better integration with Compiz and other window managers
• API stabilization work
• Unified handling virtual desktops and viewports the same way
• Improved developer docs

Nautilus File Manager

• Column-wise view
• Tabbed interface
• Key-binding support for Nautilus extensions

Seahorse Encryption Keys Manager

• Evolution integration (e-d-s integration, auto-contact creation, photo ID synchronization)
• Management of gnome-keyring encryption keys and certificates
• Python bindings for libcryptui
• Refreshed icons

Soundjuicer Audio CD Extractor

• User interface improvements
• Migration to libmusicbrainz3

Tomboy Notes

• Support for attachments, embedded images, etc.
• Cross-platform improvements

Totem Movie Player

• Better DVB support
• Migration to gio/vfs

Vinagre Remote Desktop Client

• Improved bookmarking
  • Allow folders
  • Automatically show Avahi-discovered machines
  • Import/Export bookmarks
• Panel applet: quick access to bookmarked and avahi-discovered connections
• Tabbed interface
• Better fullscreen mode
• Send custom keys (like Ctrl-Alt-Del) to the server
• Control the properties of a connection (like depth color, read-only mode, etc)

Vino Desktop Remote Access

• Support for reverse connections
• Support for connection logging
• Ability to choose which interface to listen to

Zenity

• Multi-task support for progressbar dialog
• Support for setting label names
• Improvements on notification icon

For Developers

Anjuta Integrated Development Environment

• Improvements on GtkSourceView-based editor

• Easy start-up wizard
• Improved program execution interface
• Improved build plugin
• Port GTK+ 2.10 deprecated APIs
• Migration to gio/gvfs

Gail

• Move Gail into GTK+

Glade User Interface Designer

• New parser, allows plugin backends to define widget-class level definitions of the XML format
• Allow plugins to define editors for custom properties

• Support for both formats libglade/GtkBuilder, with UI feedback and error summaries regarding incompatibilities in conversions

• Support targeting of specific toolkit versions
• New builder features

  • Support for GtkLabel attributes property with editor

  • Integration of GtkUIManager and GtkActions

  • Integration of GtkSizeGroup

  • Integration of GtkListStore/GtkTreeStore editors

  • Integration of GtkTreeView editor (packing of columns and cell renderers)

GVFS

• Fix regressions introduced by the transition from GnomeVFS

• Support for Proxy Auto-configuration (PAC)
• Configure options for mount points
• Possible emblems support on gio/gvfs level

Pango

• Merge all shapers with the ones from Qt in HarfBuzz

• Remove all script shapers, add a single HarfBuzz shaper

For Everyone

Infrastructure

• Decide on a new Distributed Version Control System (This is not about switching, just deciding and understanding implications)

• Move buildbot master to elsewhere
• Add loads more buildbots (needs changes in buildbot)
• Setup new GNOME website on GNOME servers, if ready
• Upgrade svn.gnome.org to SVN 1.4+ and setup readonly SVN mirror on container
• Complete move of sysadmin.gnome.org content to the wiki
• Document everything; policies, servers, etc
• Setup slave DNS server on socket
• Upgrade socket, progress to new Ubuntu LTS

Proposed modules

Keep in mind that there's no guarantee that the proposed modules will actually be integrated into GNOME.

• Empathy: a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets.

• Conduit: a synchronization architecture for the GNOME desktop.

• Hamster: a time tracking applet for the GNOME desktop.

GNOME 2.26

For Users

Evolution Groupware

• IMAP relook/revamp
• More plugin loaders

• WebKit or GtkMoz* integration

• Full fledged logging support

GNOME Control Center

• Support for launching arbitrary commands via keybindings

GNOME Media

• Replace gnome-volume-control with a PulseAudio mixer, and/or a higher-level device control UI

GNOME Power Manager

• Better ConsoleKit and PolicyKit integration

Gucharmap

• Ability to print charts of characters with pangocairo

Nautilus File Manager

• Toolbar editor
• Improved list view interaction

Seahorse Encryption Keys Manager

• Possibly a Pidgin/Telepathy encryption plugin
• Digitally signed documents in Evince

Tomboy Notes

• Complete cross-platform support

Vinagre Remote Desktop Client

• Support for RDP (Microsoft Terminal Services) connections

Vino Desktop Remote Access

• Ability to disable wallpaper

For Developers

Anjuta Integrated Development Environment

• New Symbol database plugin
• Improved symbol autocompletion
• Better Glade integration
• Automated UI testing
• Git plugin

For Everyone

Future 2.x releases

For Users

Artwork

• Colorscheme support on themes and appearance capplet

Evince Document Viewer

• Testsuite with a good coverage
• Better developer documentation
• Metadata integration with a common GNOME framework
• OCR support
• Better integrated postscript support with text search, etc.

GNOME Developer Docs

• Update the Platform Overview to reflect changes in the platform such as the upcoming gio/gvfs, search technologies, and D-Bus desktop services
• Cleanup Human Interface Guidelines 2.0 with updated screenshots and other misc fixes
• Revamp the Documentation Handbook in order to reflect recent and upcoming changes to the documentation system, such as Mallard and Rarian
• The following documents are on the drawing board:
  • Internationalization Guide
  • Optimization Guide

GNOME Doc Utils

• Support for easy PDF generation

GNOME Media

• Webcam support
• Common widgets/gst helpers
• GNOME media converter
• a2dp/upnp integration
• Live streaming recording in sound-recorder or podcaster
• Audio configuration tester (test surround installation, for example)
• Better and usable encoding profiles

GNOME Panel

• New library for the applets
• Compatibility layer for old Bonobo applets and remove Bonobo usage in the Panel
• New interaction model for managing applets: activate/deactivate an applet instead of adding/removing it, eg. Possibly, a mode for editing the panel contents
• Better integration with multi-user setups (eg. have a Switch to "user" in the logout dialog)
• Simplify the panel code related to Session/GDM: only call dbus methods that will be implemented by GNOME Session
• Eye-candy additions

Metacity Window Manager

• Improved EWMH/ICCCM support
• Improved DnD interaction with applications
• SELinux-related labels for windows

Pessulus

• Support for pluggable lockdown addons for applications

For Developers

AtSpi

• D-Bus support

GConf

• Migration to GSettings and dconf: new settings or preferences management platform

For Everyone

Infrastructure

• Switch test module to chosen Distributed Version Control System (DVCS)
• Upgrade GNOME Bugzilla to 3.0 (while keeping all customizations not yet upstreamed)
  • Switch from RT3 to Bugzilla
• Make use of 'configuration management software'

Library.gnome.org

• Support for Project Mallard documents
• Online editing and support for merging annotations with content

GNOME 3.0

Some GNOME hackers have discussed what form GNOME '3.0' would take, such as radically changing its user model or taking advantage of new technologies. However, the changes in this roadmap are more incremental, designed to fit within the basically stable UI and APIs we guarantee within the 2.x series. For more on the radical changes that could be in a GNOME 3.0, see the long-term ideas at ThreePointZero. And remember, even then, the GNOME 3 APIs would be available in addition to the existing GNOME 2 APIs, so there is no risk that today's applications would break in the future.

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