Bug#351238: gnome-applets: Stickynotes applet crippled my panel icon, stole my menu, and ate my desktop

[Ron]

Package: gnome-applets
Version: 2.12.2-4
Severity: normal

Hi,

Better put your thick skin on, as I'm unhappy with a 'feature'...
But I'll try to be a bit more polite than some others have been
about sort of thing  ;-)

The new behaviour of the sticky notes applet to no longer allow
hiding them by any other means other than the amazingly obscure
and unhinted "big desktop button" is certainly as presumptuous
as it is surprising.

Why remove the perfectly good option of hiding them from the same
applet icon that controls their other functions?  Or not present
an option to hide them from the right click menu or other interface
on the note itself?

However 'handy' this behaviour might be, it _must_ be configurable
FROM THE APPLET (and not via some even more obscure 'easter egg'
to be hunted for with a separate registry editor).

If my root window is about to become some application's function
button, then _I_ want to choose which function of which application
it invokes.  Because I might prefer 'clicking on my desktop' to
instead poll my mail, or pop an xterm, or purge gnome, or initiate
some other process that I do far more often than hiding sticky notes.

Please guys.  I'm all for "user friendly" and simplifying things,
and I do appreciate the hard work you put into all of this, but this
is stretching the "friendship" a bit far.  There aren't even always
bits of my 'desktop' showing through to click...

How many other apps do this - to make it expected by users (let alone
have it hardcoded as the only remaining way to access some function)?
And if others were to, how on earth could they co-exist with sticky
notes on the same system?

Not acting like you own the place would seem to be a fairly important
part of any "friendly" interface to a complex system you are not the
admin of.  This change seems to have crossed that bound unnecessarily.

I hope it can be backed off to a convenience option which aliases
or supplements the function of a more traditional control -- and
the primary option to hide the notes can be put back into some more
sensible relationship with the operations that were performed to
create or show them.

Maybe there is something (else) I missed (I had to go trolling bug
reports before I 'discovered' the idea of clicking the root window),
but if so, I would hope that also should speak for itself ... ;-)

But aside from that,
Thanks!
Ron


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.12
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages gnome-applets depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.4.70            Debian configuration management sy
ii  gconf2                 2.12.1-8          GNOME configuration database syste
ii  gnome-applets-data     2.12.2-4          Various applets for GNOME 2 panel 
ii  gnome-icon-theme       2.12.1-2          GNOME Desktop icon theme
ii  gnome-panel            2.12.2-3          launcher and docking facility for 
ii  gstreamer0.8-oss [gstr 0.8.11-6          OSS plugin for GStreamer
ii  libapm1                3.2.2-5           Library for interacting with APM d
ii  libatk1.0-0            1.10.3-1          The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libbonobo2-0           2.10.1-1          Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libbonoboui2-0         2.10.1-2          The Bonobo UI library
ii  libc6                  2.3.5-12.1        GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libdbus-1-2            0.60-5            simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2       0.60-5            simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgconf2-4            2.12.1-8          GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglade2-0            1:2.5.1-2         library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0           2.8.6-1           The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-desktop-2     2.12.2-2          Utility library for loading .deskt
ii  libgnome2-0            2.12.0.1-5        The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomeui-0           2.12.0-2          The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgnomevfs2-0         2.12.2-5          GNOME virtual file-system (runtime
ii  libgstreamer-plugins0. 0.8.11-6          Various GStreamer libraries and li
ii  libgstreamer0.8-0      0.8.11-3          Core GStreamer libraries, plugins,
ii  libgtk2.0-0            2.8.10-1          The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libgtop2-5             2.12.2-1          Libraries for gtop system monitori
ii  libgucharmap4          1:1.4.4-3         Unicode browser widget library (sh
ii  libhal1                0.5.6-2           Hardware Abstraction Layer - share
ii  libpanel-applet2-0     2.12.2-3          library for GNOME 2 panel applets
ii  libpango1.0-0          1.10.2-1          Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libwnck18              2.12.2-2          Window Navigator Construction Kit 
ii  libx11-6               6.9.0.dfsg.1-4    X Window System protocol client li
ii  libxklavier10          2.1-0.1           X Keyboard Extension high-level AP
ii  libxml2                2.6.23.dfsg.1-0.1 GNOME XML library

Versions of packages gnome-applets recommends:
pn  gnome-media                <none>        (no description available)
pn  gnome-netstatus-applet     <none>        (no description available)
ii  gnome-system-monitor       2.12.2-2      Process viewer and system resource
ii  imagemagick                6:6.2.4.5-0.6 Image manipulation programs