Synaptic doesn't respect gnome menu and toolbar preferences

[Jon Dufresne]

If you change the gnome menu and toolbar preferences to display toolbars as
"icons only" synaptic continues to display its toolbar as "text below icons" I
feel this should respect the user's preferences.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

The problem here is that synaptic runs as root (via sudo/gksudo) whereas the
toolsbar settings are part of the users gconf settings. When synaptic runs as
root it has no access to the users gconf settings.

[Jonathon Conte (thesicktwist)]

If that is the case then how are a user's GTK+ theme and font preferences
utilized by Synaptic (something I just noticed in Breezy Colony 3--good job
developers!)?

If there are two system administrators who have different preferences for
accessiblity reasons, they should not be forced to share the same settings just
because they are running Synaptic (or any other graphical program for that
matter). Perhaps the programs front-end should run as the user and the back-end
as root?

The end-user should see a consistent interface across the system. Anything less
than that is a usability issue that should be addressed.

[Jon Dufresne (jdufresne)]

Would it be possible to run synaptic as a user (non-admin) and use gtksu only when admin rights are needed to install.

This would allow the program to run as a user, with a11y features, but still grant the rights when it is time to install.

Not sure if this is possible, just an idea.

[Alexander Jones (alex-weej)]

Even running as non-root still doesn't respect your toolbar settings.

[Alexander Jones (alex-weej)]

And running, say, gedit as root does indeed respect your toolbar settings. I think this is an easy fix.

[Alexander Jones (alex-weej)]

OK so the problem here is that Synaptic has a choice of either text-only, icons-only, text-beside-icons, text-below-icons, or hide. The only way to get the configured behaviour is to leave the setting alone. We can either mess around adding a "use default" option, or we can just get rid of the toolbar configuration code.

I vote for the latter, it's completely pointless in my book, but then Synaptic isn't really a GNOME application.

Michael, what should I do?

[Alexander Jones (alex-weej)]

/ping mvo

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

There is also a similar (not a duplicate though) bug about toolbar preferences, if someone is going to have a look at this bug, maybe she should also take a look at the other bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/synaptic/+bug/81006

[Alex Converse (ajc30)]

This should fix the problem by replacing Synaptic's toolbar submenu with a simple show/hide and the inhering the style of the shown toolbar from the system preference.

[Alexander Jones (alex-weej)]

Good work, though don't spend too much time on this. I've a feeling we'll be
moving to some kind of PackageKit+PolicyKit setup soon...