Re: Viewports and gnome 2

[Ken Witherow <phantoml rochester rr com>]

On Thu, 2 May 2002, Jeff Waugh wrote:

> <quote who="Ken Witherow">
>
> > Dropping the functionality of viewports was a absolutely huge decision.
>
> *SMACK* You have not been listening.

I'm sitting in gnome 2 right now... I just clicked on preferences on the
pager applet.

I see the following options:

- show workspace names in the switcher
- show only the current workspace
- show all workspaces
- number of workspaces

I see nothing on there about configuring it for viewports rather than
workspaces

I have 4 workspaces setup and tell the pager to lay them out in 2 rows so
I get the following in my pager

|---|---|
|   |   |
|---|---|
|   |   |
|---|---|

edge flipping is set to move to the next workspace since there isn't a
pager which supports viewports.

the first thing I try do to is middle click on a window in the pager to
move it to another workspace as I would in gnome 1. The pager applet
slides around rather than moving my window to another workspace like I
want it to.

next, from the top left pager workspace, I slide my window over to the top
right workspace using edge flipping and from there. As expected, it shows
up in the top right pager box. From there, I edge flip it to the bottom
and instead of ending up in the bottom right pager box (as it should in
2D like gnome 1 style viewports), it ends up in the bottom left pager box.
How is that more usable behavior than gnome 1's pager and viewports where
it actually functions as a 2D plane? I don't want a linked list of
workspaces, I want a 2D plane of workspaces. I want the ability to move
windows around to that 2D plane from the pager where I have a birds eye
view of my entire desktop.

In other words, I want gnome 1 viewports. They're more intuitive than
having multiple workspaces (I have 1 workspace with a 3x2 grid of
viewports). Until gnome 2 lets me straddle windows between workspaces and
have it show up halfway on both (ala gnome 1), supports 2D edge flipping
(ala gnome 1) and has a pager which allows me to view and move windows
around my entire desktop(ala gnome 1), the functionality hasn't been
duplicated in the new workspace system and thus, it's is entirely useless
to me.

-- 
 Ken Witherow <phantoml AT rochester.rr.com> ICQ: 21840670
  http://krw.2y.net  <- so good, it's censored in China
    Linux 2.4.18 - because I'd like to get there today
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