RFC GnomeGoal #3

["Marc-André Lureau" <marcandre lureau gmail com>]

Peekaboo!
(I am sorry, I don't know how to reply to a list I did not receive)

I  might be the  only one,  but I  would rather  let Metacity  (or any
window manager) do the job  of positionning/sizing my windows.  As you
could read on the msdn blog,  saving state of an application is really
tricky.

I would really appreciate that  my desktop take good decision before I
do, without  embarrassing me.   That's why I  like to talk  of "smart"
concepts all  the time. Dumb  things happen all  the time, and  we are
used to deal with,  but not my mom. And I except  a desktop to do this
for me.

The smart window  positionning/sizing I was talking about  has to take
care of  whether I am  running on  host X or  Y, with monitor  A, with
resolution X, with  N workspace and deal with that.   For me, there is
no common  rule to apply to restore  a window position. This  as to be
think with a persistence mechanism coupled with an algorithm (although
I like  the simplicity of window  positionning of the  pair Metacity &
Devil's  Spie, which  can be  explain  simply with  a matching  window
events  management system).  How  could we  make  this more  advanced,
simple (without e-sexp file) and smart ?

Now, what should be a "saved state" ?  I like to think about this like
"preferences that changes all the time".

My idea  for a  "common saving state"  of a program include:
- the last directory where the "Open/Save File" dialog where at
(I would really appreciate this for any application)
- the view I had (ie the notebook page, widget expanded or not)
- sort orders, list position
- focus (if relevant)
...

It's  misleading to  think that  saving state  of a  window is  like a
session management.   Session management is  like restoring everything
(the number of running apps, the file that were opened), it's not like
a preference. (No?)

The window manager would then be responsible to save:
- window state, pos/size, transparency  (I don't like that, but people
are strange),  place in  the stack  of windows (wether  it was  in the
back, always on top) and visibility priority (which could be a key for
a more advanced smart window manager concept...)

And I am thinking hard to offer a solution to this with GSmartMix:
 - the sound level :)

Note: I really appreciate libgconf-binding, and I am
ready to use it with GSmartMix. It might be added to libgconf, that
would prevent another dependency to a small library that does a 
really nice job.

-- 
Marc-André Lureau, GSmartMix