Unfortunately that feature, session saving, didn’t quite work because it is up to applications to implement that and only a few ever did so it turned out to be one of those nice designs that didn’t work out in the real world (I think you can still invoke it from the command line). Fear not though, suspend/resume/hibernate does work pretty well these days, even on desktops I believe, and that gives you exactly what you are asking for.

Spell checker – there is already enchant which most gnome apps use or should be using (Mozilla and OpenOffice are supposed to be using hunspell which enchant supports)

XSane – this has been a request from before I remember – not saying it isn’t important but a) no one has stepped up to do this work and b) local scanners aren’t as prevalent especially in offices where you usually scan and e-mail from a networked scanner/copier.

Work with orgs – We do in many capacities such as Freedesktop.org, the Linux Foundation and the GNOME Foundation as well as individual companies doing the work. Mozilla and Open Office have had work done on them to support the same file dialog, spell checking (I’m not sure if Mozilla has switched to hunspell yet but it was on their roadmap) and print. It all depends if your distribution has the patches in it (mozilla and oo have everything you asked for in Fedora 8 that I am running). As for Adobe, they use GTK+ for acrobat but it is most likely an older version and statically compiled. You need to lobby for that (though evince, which is quite good, has the integration you seek). For closed source software it is a pain as one must convince ISV’s which are often set in their old ways (we did get Adobe to turn around a bit though) but for open source software it is as easy as someone doing the work though there is often little interest on certain areas which might not be as good a use of a developers limited time. Some things just are prioritized down the stack so they take time to get done (e.g. scanners). Not that people don’t want to do them but we only have so many productive hours in a year.

Control Center for Fonts – there was one called fontillus or something like that – drag and drop font addition. You can do this by dropping fonts into a directory in your home dir but it isn’t so discoverable – better documentation would help.

Encourage distributions to stop using system pref/admin – This all comes down to preference and philosophy. I’m not sure which is better but Control Center isn’t a panacea either. I think GNOME 3.0 has some good ideas about this though.

Launchers for web config – that is up to the upstream to provide .desktop files – file a bug but really the web interface for cups is wrong for users (might be ok for admins but we have better ones). I’ve never used the iTunes server but short rant bellow about configuration.

Putting on my UI Designer Hat – Configuration is the antithesis to productivity. If the defaults are not sane enough or it requires an admin to setup then the desktop tools are the wrong scope and the casual desktop users should search for another solution (does iTunes need a system configured server to serve music?). If you ask for the Desktop developer to concentrate on such tasks when we already have a number of other desktop apps which will serve up music then you are asking them to waste their time on problems which are already solved or where the solution you require is suboptimal for the desktop. When thinking about design it is important to not look at what is available per say but what do you want to accomplish. “I want to configure my printer or I want to serve songs from my computer even when I am not logged in”. One could always ask for patches to what is already out there – like creating a D-Bus protocol and PolicyKit profile for letting user access a persistent song server. However when there is work to be done we can’t expect it to get done unless we ourselves contribute in some way (file bugs, write a patch, write an app, etc.). Even then you can’t expect it to get done or even be certain that your idea is a good one which will prove to outweigh the costs of developing it. I don’t expect my idea here is going to get done or if the people working on GNOME 3.0 think it is a good idea (or even in practice if it is a good idea). The only expectation I have is someone might read it, like it and implement it, or someone else will find thread of good ideas and come up with better ones or I can squeeze some time out of my busy life and implement it with the feedback I have gotten here.

In any case that is my rant – public requests and designs aren’t about get this done for me – they are more about fleshing out ideas and seeing what sticks.

Install a launcher/shortcut in the Control Center for applications that use a web interface for setup/management.

Knowing that Cups can be configured at http://localhost:631 or Firefly (iTunes server) at http://localhost:3689 is not immediately obvious to some users.

- Common dictionary/spell checker API to allow one dictionary to be used for the entire system, with a user applet in the Control Center to backup, merge or install new dictionaries.

- Incorporate XSane, which is already installed by default by many distributions, as part of the Gnome desktop, and make it look like a real Gnome app.

- Work as an organization with companies and projects like the Mozilla Foundation, Adobe, OpenOffice.org to use common spell-checkers, address books, calenders, print dialogs, etc.

- Create Control Center applet for installing/managing fonts

- Encourage distributions to stop using the System ‘Preferences’ and ‘Administration’ menus and just use the Control Center.

The user would be able to add panel applets, files and launchers to the desktop and open apps. This will be maintained across sessions. The use could save the current workspace to a preset and destroy a workspace. (This should NOT remove files from the desktop subfolder)

Different workspaces MUST be under the same user and use the same home folder so that application setting and user data is shared.

A great idea, like Josh Adams proposed is to also have like your terminal history for each desktop saved, I can recall the number of times I try to use Ctrl-R to search the history for a long-ago used command that was very long and very specific to a certain task only to find I didn’t write it down and it wasn’t in my history anymore.

This feature would really enhance productivity!

Task is a sucky sucky word… Try TID – A Thing I’m Doing