Client-side decorations and button layout

[Dmitry Shachnev]

Hi all,

Currently on Unity the apps using client-side decorations (aka
headerbars) have Close button on the right side, which is inconsistent
with all other apps. A good example of such app is gnome-weather.

Modern versions of gnome-settings-daemon read a value from GSettings
(org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout) and export that to
Gtk via an XSettings property (Gtk/DecorationLayout).
If we do the same, such apps will have all 3 buttons (close, minimize,
maximize) on the left side. In my opinion, that looks a bit messy (see
the screenshot attached).

Recent versions of Gtk+ also allow to add "appmenu" button to the
client-side decoration. It can be useful for apps which have both the
appmenu and the traditional menu (IIRC in such case indicator-appmenu
will only show the traditional one). Also, it can be useful for users
who have global menu disabled or users of non-Unity environments like
GNOME Flashback.

So, we have some options:

1) Just follow GNOME and read from GSettings — all three buttons will be seen.
2) Read from GSettings but filter out maximize and minimize — only
close will be seen by default. It will be possible to move/show/hide
close and appmenu buttons in the decorations using the usual GSettings
way, and it will be possible to use an override
(org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides) to show the
rest of buttons.
3) Just hardcode that we have the close button on the left side, and only it.
3A) Hardcode that we have the close button on the left side, and an
appmenu button somewhere.

I have prepared a branch that implements 1),
lp:~mitya57/unity-settings-daemon/headerhar-xsettings. The built
package is also available in ppa;mitya57/gnome-test.

Opinions?

P.S. This is of course not in Utopic scope, but it will be nice to
have better decorations in Utopic+1.

--
Dmitry Shachnev
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