Standard configuration proposal

Thanks, I just found that bug while looking before registering a similar one. The Ubuntu Desktop team discussed doing similar changes to the default this cycle (at least docked at the bottom and streched, unsure about the height one) ... onboard team, have those defaults ever be considered? Is there any good reason we wouldn't want to do those changes?

The main reason the defaults are as they are, is that we haven't come up with anything better that works equally well for all screen sizes. Docking is great if there are fingers hovering over that general area of the screen, but less so if there's a pointer that has to travel the distance to the bottom. Stretching from edge to edge is a lot more desirable on smallish touch screens than on pointer operated 24" and larger monitors.

Judging by the bug reports we receive, tablet users seem to have become the majority, though. Perhaps it's time to inconvenience them less, turn on docking and stretching and accept the "broken" look on large screens.

At least short term. Medium term I think we could do better by adapting the settings to the system at runtime. I've been thinking about this on and off before, there would be a number of profiles to chose from, e.g. "Tablet", "Desktop", "Keyboard scanning", etc. . The most suitable one (hopefully) would be selected on first start, but it could be manually changed any time afterwards. That's too late for Xenial, though, I suppose. Too large of a change to get it accepted, probably.

@Sebastien

Onboard might already offer what you are looking for. In fact, Onboard can read on its first run an optional defaults file. The purpose of this file is to allow distributions to configure Onboard to their wishes.

The file is called onboard-defaults.conf and is installed by the patch in the onboard package available in the ubuntu repository.

I am adding an updated version of the onboard package with docking and expansion enabled to this bug thread. In other words, with this updated version, onboard will be docked and stretched from left to right on fresh ubuntu installation (to be more accurate, I should have said on ubuntu installations, that did not run onboard yet).

A few words about the onboard updates offered here:

You might also wonder why I am providing two updates. In fact, I noticed that the patch in version onboard_1.2.0-0ubuntu1 had not been refreshed and was still referencing an older ubuntu version. Thus, I first created onboard_1.2.0-0ubuntu2 that refreshes the patch and then onboard_1.2.0-0ubuntu3 that adds docking and expansion accross the screen to it.

You might wonder why the expand key is not enabled in the updated onboard-defaults.conf for portrait mode. It is not enabled because it is enabled by default for portrait mode.

Maybe an additional final remark:

There is also a way to force the settings in the defaults file on users that did already run onboard in the past. By setting the "use-system-defaults" gsetting key of onboard to true, onboard will read the defaults file when it starts up, write all the configuration settings provided in the file to the users gsetting keys and reset the "use-system-defaults" key to false. In other words, if an onboard package uses its post installation script to set the "use-system-defaults" key to true for all users, their onboard gsettings key will be overwritten with the values of the defaults file on the first onboard start after the installation of onboard. However, I don't think that it is a good idea to change the users configuration without notice and the updates I am attaching here do not contain such a script.

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions; marmuta and myself will be glad to help if we can.

The attachment "onboard_1.2.0-0ubuntu2.debdiff" seems to be a debdiff. The ubuntu-sponsors team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review and hopefully sponsor the debdiff. If the attachment isn't a patch, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are member of the ~ubuntu-sponsors, unsubscribe the team.

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@Francesco

Thanks for the update, I tried it on my xenial system in a guest session, it works fine and looks better imho, even on a desktop, I'm sponsoring it. Not changing the config on upgrade sounds fine, if users are using to something better to keep it this way indeed

This bug was fixed in the package onboard - 1.2.0-0ubuntu3

---------------
onboard (1.2.0-0ubuntu3) xenial; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/add_defaults_for_ubuntu.patch:
    - Add comments about where to find info about more keys
    - Add keys about docking and expending the Onboard window
    - Enable docking of Onboard window (LP: #1546654)
    - Enable expanding in portrait and landscape mode (LP: #1546654)

 -- Francesco Fumanti <email address hidden> Thu, 25 Feb 2016 20:46:36 +0100

We leave the Onboard part of this bug thread open for the moment, as marmuta might implement a smarter solution.

@Sebastien

> it works fine and looks better imho, even on a desktop
Hmm, that squished look...I don't know. There's an awful lot of mouse travel necessary too. How about we put a limit on the aspect ratio and add semi-transparent bars to the sides? It'll look similar to GNOME's keyboard, only the bars would disappear gradually with increasing keyboard height.

I have this in trunk now, see screen-shot. I think I feel more comfortable with enabling dock-expand on landscape screens this way. Comments welcome. The aspect limit can still be removed in onboard-defaults.conf or gsettings and you'll get the old behavior.

For the other changes requested by this bug report we will have to go away from a single set of static defaults and select/calculate them at runtime. It's not only docking, initial positions and sizes, but also things like pointer-travel optimized repositioning, which I'd like to see enabled for desktops but not for touch-devices.

@Ubuntu Sponsors Team

Sorry for adding the Ubuntu Sponsors Team a moment ago to this bug thread; I wanted to add it to a different bug thread, but did an error and added it to this.