The GNOME Roadmap Archive
This page holds the roadmap for previous stable releases of GNOME. If you want to see the current official roadmap, have a look at RoadMap page.
To know more about our Roadmap process, go to RoadMap/Process
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Contents
GNOME 2.22
For Users
Artwork
Remove LargePrint icon theme
- Support for placeholder icons
- Add .pc files for a11y themes, so applications can install their own a11y icons
Fix canvas in available HighContrast-SVG icons
- Misc consistency improvements:
- Focus rings in the different themes
- Expander in Clearlooks theme
- Support for fill levels in other engines
Remove the Low Contrast icons (Under discussion)
- Improvements on the default look of GDM
- Complete gnome-icon-theme
More HighContrast icons, especially for application launchers
Deskbar Applet
Support for NewStuffManager (soon to be renamed to Capuchin): easy download of additional plugins from internet
- Full Evolution address book search
- Performance improvements
Ekiga VoIP Client
- Release of 3.0
- Support for audio and video codecs on the form of plugins (allowing H.263, H.264 to be used through appropriate plugins)
- New user interface
- SIP Presence support (to know if somebody is away, in a call, and so on)
- Xvideo support
- A better Win32 version thanks to DirectX support (sound, video, display)
- IAX2 support
Epiphany Web Browser
Experimental WebKit backend
Evince Document Viewer
Annotation support (SoC Project 2007)
- Support for page transition effects on presentations
- Improve UI feedback when opening remote files, exposing document metadata and others
- Support for specials and printing in DVI
- Migration to gio/gvfs
- Improved selections (selecting images, images + text, etc)
- Improved History handling
- Thumbnails in file chooser
- Stability, test coverage and proper documentation
- Perfomance and efficiency improvements
Evolution Groupware
Non-intrusive error reporting (Read more)
- Message Tagging (aka Custom Labels)
- External editor support
- Google Calendar support
- Option to disable search folders (can improve memory)
Evolution Data Server
- Google Calendar backend
- Stability, and minimize the memory requirement
Eye of GNOME Image Viewer
- Set of powerful plugins
- Printing multiple images per sheet
- Support for IPTC metadata
- Misc improvements on plugin API
- Misc usability improvements
Gedit Text Editor
Migration to GtkPrint
- Migration to gio/gvfs
- Remove libgnome[ui] dependency
GNOME Control Center
- New Localization capplet with keyboard layout and language
New Input Devices capplet with Keyboard, Mouse, and others (Under discussion)
- New Screen capplet with screen resolution, screen saver, and xrandr
- Desktop Effects in Appearance capplet
- More performance improvements in gnome-settings-daemon
libslab API review and bonobo replacement with GtkUnique
GNOME Desktop
- Finish moving the docs to the gnome-user-guide module
- Rewrite gnome-about so that it looks better, and fix related a11y bugs
- Remove all deprecated icons
GNOME Display Manager (GDM)
- Redesign of GDM so that it makes use of D-Bus for all interprocess communications
- Revamp of configuration management system so it is based on XML
- Redesign of gdmsetup
GNOME Doc Utils
- Mallard, the new topic-oriented help format
GNOME Games
- Aisleriot
- Animation/arrow to better visualize hints
- Chess
- Fix remaining crashers in glChess
- Support for GGZ networking
- Gnometris
- Fix performance problems on new theme
- Gtali
- Tooltips for the score table
- Undo feature
- Robots
- Make robots resizable/translatable
- Sudoku
- Revamped game-saving/restoring with a vastly simplified interface
- File-based system to store information about generated and played puzzles for better error handling
GNOME Keyboard Handling (libgnomekbd)
- Use explicit gettext-based translation to retrieve localized layout descriptions
GNOME Keyring
- Support for using blank passwords with keyrings which results in an unencrypted keyring.
- Initial support for X.509 certificates and keys.
- SSH agent based on new certificate and key store.
- Basic PKCS#11 integration to make gnome-keyring a certificate and key store.
- Simpler API for using passwords and secrets from gnome-keyring.
GNOME Panel
- Time zone support in the clock applet
- Support for editing the menu layout on Menubar and Main Menu, not only the application menu
- Fix positioning of applets when the panel size changes
- Nice effect when clicking on a launcher
GNOME System Tools
- HAL integration
- rtnetlink integration (Linux only)
Optional PolicyKit use
GNOME On-screen Keyboard
- Work on Firefox 3 accessibility interoperability
Fix remaining hardware issues related to use of FreeDesktop.org's XEvIE
GNOME Utils
- Dictionary
- Support for local files (dict and possibly stardict)
- Custom definitions to a local database
- Wikipedia support
Migration to GtkPrint
- 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
- System Log Viewer
- Plugin system to handle different log sources
Metacity Window Manager
- Support for multi-screen full screening
- Code/infrastructure refactoring of the handling of transients
Support for MPX (Multiple Pointer X) (SoC Project 2007)
Nautilus File Manager
- Migration to gio/gvfs
Orca
- Phase out Orca's atspi.py in favor of pyatspi.py
- Aggressive bug fixing and performance work
Speech Refactoring (+)
- Support switching between multiple locales
- Support finer granularity of voices
- Braille refactoring
Support better input/control from Braille device (text selection, navigation, etc.) (+)
- Support display of text attribute information
- Support contracted Braille
- Better support for AJAX and ARIA on Firefox 3.0
- Provide compelling access to Thunderbird 3.0
Provide compelling/useful access to OpenOffice Impress (+)
Provide compelling/useful access to OpenOffice Database (+)
(+) = if time permits
Seahorse Encryption Keys Manager
- Complete implementation of missing gnome-keyring-manager features (Access Control Lists)
Totem Video Player
- MythTV plugin
- Better playlist drag and drop
- Full DVB support
- Better support for text subtitle selection
Session Management
- 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
Tomboy Notes
- Automatic/Background Synchronization
- Support for tasks inside notes
- Support for note tagging
Vino Desktop Remote Access
- Clipboard support between VNC client and server
- New VNC client well integrated to GNOME
- "Advanced" settings on configuration applet
Yelp Help Viewer
- Improved stylesheets (layout) for printing and docbook
- Improved table 'o contents
- Support for Mallard
Zenity
- Support for multitask in progress dialog
- Support for setting dialog button labels
For Developers
Accerciser
- New validation plugin
AtSpi
- Initial work on removing Bonobo dependency
- Feasibility study for migration to D-bus
DevHelp API Documentation Browser
- User interface for easily installing new books
WebKit support
- Misc UI improvements
GnomeVFS
- Migration to gio/gvfs
Gail
- Better accessibility support for GTK+
Glade
Support for various output formats (glade files for libglade & for gtk+ builder)
- Allow developers to add custom code for editing and (de)serializing their custom widgets/properties
Pango
Move to new HarfBuzz code base that uses mmap()ed font files, saving lots of per-process private memory
- Fix backspacing problem for non-Latin languages
- Perfectly text-extractable PDFs using pangocairo
- Allow loading fonts from a font file and use it with Pango
For Admins
Pessulus Lockdown Editor
- Integrate Pessulus into Sabayon source tree
Support for pluggable lockdown addons for applications (Need volunteer)
Sabayon User Profile Manager
- Syslog logging for sabayon-apply
- Lockdown support for Evolution and Gaim
- Improved user interface
For Everyone
Documentation
Documentation editor for Project Mallard (SoC Project 2007)
Infrastructure
- Upgrade servers to RHEL5 update1
- Upgrade last server (menubar) to RHEL5
- Use RAID1 and upgrade HDDs on buildbot master
- Setup new GNOME website on GNOME servers
- Upgrade GNOME Bugzilla to 3.0 (while keeping all customizations not yet upstreamed)
- Upgrade svn.gnome.org to SVN 1.4+ and setup readonly SVN mirror on a container
Make use of 'configuration management software', see this overview (Currently looking at puppet)
- Complete move of sysadmin.gnome.org content to the wiki.
- Document everything; policies, servers, etc
- Switch from RT3 to Bugzilla
- Setup slave DNS server on socket
- Upgrade socket,progress to new Ubuntu LTS (if LTS is out before 2.22)
Library.gnome.org
- Implement search engine
- API lookup
- Local search engine, language-aware, only indexing recent documentation
- Implement support for annotations
- PDF output
- Improved gtk-doc transformation (cross links, output style)
Support for unstable API references via BuildBot
- Automatic tool to report a bug when docs can't be built
Proposed modules
Keep in mind that there's no guarantee that the proposed modules will actually be integrated into GNOME.
Anjuta DevStudio: an integrated development environment for GNOME.
Empathy: a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets.
Cheese: a photobooth-inspired GNOME application for taking pictures and videos from a webcam.
Gimmie: a tab-like replacement for the main Panel menubar, providing logical access to the concepts of the desktop.
Vinagre: a VNC client for GNOME.
Mouse Tweaks: a set of special accessibility enhancements to controlling the mouse cursor.
GtkGLExt: an OpenGL extension to GTK+ 2.0.
GNOME 2.20
For Users
Deskbar Applet
Major refactoring (SoC Project 2007)
- D-Bus API to access deskbar functionalities
- Object (i.e. files, persons, etc) actions (open, send to for a file, call, chat, send email, view vcard for a contact)
Epiphany Web Browser
- Better inline completion of URLs entered in the address bar
- Printing improvements (support for frames, a progress window)
- Better use of icons in the user interface, also accessibility-related
- Smooth scrolling can be enabled from the Preferences
- Other minor improvements
Evince Document Viewer
Forms support (SoC Project 2006)
- Printing multiple pages per sheet
- Persistent print settings
- Use cairo in the view
Evolution Groupware
- Improved SPAM filtering with plugable junk filters
- Backup restore support
- Improved e-mail notification
- Improved Gtk+ Printing support for mails
- System Timezone Integration
- Attachment reminder for message composer
- Evolution Exchange
- Better offline support
- Improved message loading
- Lots of Performance improvements
- Delegation support
Eye of GNOME Image Viewer
- Editable toolbar
- Plugin system
- Support for XMP metadata
- UI improvements
- Image collection pane
- Image properties dialog
- Preferences dialog
- Error/warning feedback
File Roller Archive Manager
- Load and save remote archives
- Extract archive to a remote locations
- DnD and Copy/Paste among File Roller windows
- Pathbar instead of the locationbar
Gedit Text Editor
Migration to GtkSourceView 2 which features a new and improved highlighting engine
GNOME Control Center
- Merge Themes, Fonts, Background, UI into an Appearance configuration applet
GNOME Display Manager (GDM)
- Support for Linux auditing.
- Better utmp/wtmp support.
- RBAC (Role Based Access Control) support for Shutdown, Reboot, and Suspend.
- UI improvements (e.g. addition of background tag to gdmgreeter theme XML files).
- Accessibility improvements.
GNOME Keyring
- Proper integration with PAM so another keyring password prompt is not necessary
- Use of non-pageable memory for sensitive data and secrets
- Ability to store keyrings on removable media.
- Integration with power management to discard all sensitive memory before sleeping or hibernating
GNOME Magnifier
- Isolate the X11 dependency
- Improved magnifier compositor performance
- New applet to apply colorblind filters
GNOME Panel
- Fix positioning of panels when the screen size changes
- Sort windows by workspace in the Window List applet
GNOME Power Manager
- Per-battery profiling
- Improved statistics interface that provide more details and key value outputs
Full compliance with FreeDesktop.org power management specification
GNOME System Tools
- WPA support for network-admin
- Password for SMB shares in shares-admin
- Bookeeping added NTP servers
- Better network locations integration
GNOME Themes
- New Inverted metacity theme
- Updated Clearlooks and Glossy Metacity themes
GNOME Utils
- Show more details for each file system in Baobab
- Perform a look up for similar words for each query in Dictionary
- Use case insensitive search when finding words in a Dictionary definition
GNOME On-screen Keyboard
Fix remaining hardware issues related to use of FreeDesktop.org's XEvIE.
Libwnck
- Better integration with Compiz and other window managers
- DnD in the window list to reorganize how windows are sorted
Metacity Window Manager
- Better RTL languages support
Orca
- Improved access to Firefox and Thunderbird
- Several fixes for i18n/l10n-related issues
- Better support for multilingual text
Seahorse Encryption Keys Manager
- Complete implementation of missing GNOME Keyring Manager features
- Change master password
- Better Evolution integration
Make evolution use libcryptui widgets and D-Bus method calls (SoC Project 2007)
- e-d-s integration, auto-contact creation, photo ID synchronization
- Themable application specific icons
Tomboy Notes
- Support notes synchronization across multiple machines
Yelp Help Viewer
- Replace Scrollkeeper with (backwards compatible) new desktop-agnostic library
Zenity
- Timeout for dialogs
For Developers
AtSpi
- Support for Python
Epiphany
Experimental WebKit backend
GLib
Support for FreeDesktop.org's xdg-user-dirs
GTK+
This is a small selection from the improvements in the upcoming GTK+ 2.12. For more detailed information please refer to the GTK+ 2.11.x release annoucement or the GTK+ ChangeLog for even greater detail.
GtkBuilder (a replacement of libglade)
- Support for widget offscreen rendering
- New Tap-n-Hold API
- New Tooltips API
- Allows complex tooltips (markup, images)
- Tooltips on insensitive widgets
- Tooltips on treeviews, etc.
GtkFileChooser updates
- Improved file chooser dialog size logic
- New search mode with backends for Beagle, Tracker and simple search
- New recent files support
- New Input Methods
- Thai and Lao
- Multipress input method for phone pads
- Builtin stock icons replaced with a new set of Tango-compatible icons
- GDK updates
- New API for changing startup notification id on a window
- New API for sending startup notification messages
- New GDK threads API to allow fully thread-safe handling of idles and timeouts
Better support for compositing in GdkWindow
- Keyboard navigation improvements
- Infrastructure for notification of failed keyboard navigation
- Better support for restricted sets of keys
GtkScaleButton, GtkVolumeButton: new widgets for volume controls frequently seen in multimedia applications
- Printing support updates
- Support half-open ranges
- New API for listing paper sizes and (de)serializing page setups and print settings
- Recent Files API updates
Support for custom menu items in GtkRecentChooserMenu
New GtkRecentAction
GtkRange updates
- Support for fill levels
GtkEntry updates
- Inline-selection mode for entry completion (closer to what web browsers need)
- Added gtk_entry_set_cursor_hadjustment() to support automatic scrolling
GtkStatusIcon updates
- Multiscreen support
- Don't take up space when invisible
GtkCellRendererProgress updates
- The progress bar is now drawn using the theme engine
- Support activity mode
GtkNotebook updates
- Support scrolling during tab DnD
- Allow dropping tabs anywhere
- Deprecate numeric group-ids in favour of a more flexible group property
GtkTreeView updates
- Lots of scrolling fixes
- Many improvements to Windows and OS X ports
Glade
- Several improvements/added functionality in the user interface
- Support for developers to add context-menu actions for their custom widgets
Gail
- Move part of gail into libgnomecanvas
Pango
Improved OpenType Layout engine.
- Add support for specifying multiple preferred languages.
- Vertical text shaping now uses vertical variants of punctuation marks.
- New shaping engine for minority language N'Ko.
- Various new pangocairo APIs, making for a tighter integration with cairo.
For Admins
Sabayon User Profile Manager
Support for OpenOffice.org lockdown
- New logging facility for debugging
- Many robustness-related fixes
For Everyone
Infrastructure
- Install alpha quality version of library.gnome.org on some server
- Setup new GNOME website on GNOME servers
- Upgrade servers from RHEL3/4 to RHEL5
- Move GNOME buildbot master to GNOME servers
Better mango software (SoC Project 2007)
Library.gnome.org
- Improved look'n'feel that matches new GNOME website design
- Separated user/dev/admin docs
- Added support for development versions and out-of-GNOME documents
- Google site search and API lookup form
Proposed modules
Keep in mind that there's no guarantee that the proposed modules will actually be integrated into GNOME.
LSR: an extensible assistive technology for the GNOME desktop.
GNOME Devel Docs: a set of docs for GNOME developers.
Accerciser: an interactive Python accessibility explorer for the GNOME desktop.
