Re: gnome-terminal idea

[Tim Moore <tmoore tembel org>]

On Wed, 23 Sep 1998, David Jeske wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 23, 1998 at 05:32:13PM -0400, Tim Moore wrote:
> > > I think the BeOS again has a much better UI in this area also. They
> > > have a 'taskbar' but they list items by application horizontally, and
> > > then by full document name after you click. As it turns out, Nextstep
> > > 4.1 alpha did this first though.
> > 
> > Dan Kaminsky had a similar proposal:
> > http://www.best.com/~effugas/Constructs/Minbars/minbars.html
> 
> Neat idea. It certainly would be easier to find the Netscape window
> I'm looking for with a thumbnail image. Although the thumbnils for my
> minimized windows would often fill up the whole screen. :)

Yeah. There was some discussion on gnome-gui to the effect that there was
some obstacle which made the thumbnailing impossble in X, but then Dan
implied that someone found a way around that...so I don't know.

> > But even better than grouping by app is grouping by task. This is
> > difficult to do automatically, but it's not to hard to guess that a new
> > window ispart of the same task as the one it was launched from, and let
> > the user correct this when it's wrong.
> 
> Agreed... although this sounds pretty much like the virtual desktop..

I guess so. I probably would be happier if the grouping was by document
type instead of by application, even if they basically amount to the same
thing in most cases :-)

> > > I had a very similar
> > > situation in a past job using VHDL simulation tools. I just separated
> > > each task into a desktop, and switched between the desktops. The only
> > > thing someone could have done to improve this process was made a way
> > > for me to logout and log back in and keep the tools running and
> > > arranged the way I wanted them.
> > 
> > Well GNOME has that, too, though I've had trouble getting it to work very
> > well.
> 
> Actually... GNOME does not have that. You will notice that I chose to
> say "...keep the tools running...". I used the word "running" for a
> reason. I really meant it. I want my login/logout process to mimic
> "connecting and disconnecting" from a session. Much like when I telnet
> in I "connect" to my 'screen' session, and when I logout I
> "disconnect" but I never close the session.

I don't think I understand your telnet analogy? When you logout of
telnet, it stop running all of your processes that aren't running in the
background or nohup or something.

But, if I understand correctly, you mean that when you log out it
shouldn't kill any of your running processes and when you log back in,
they should reconnect to the X server? I think that would require major
changes to X (if not something deeper -- you can't do this on the console
with a shell either), but I can see why it would be desirable. But I think
a better way to think of it is not as keeping your apps going when you log
out, but allowing another session to start while one's already going. You
can sort of do that by running multiple X servers on different virtual
consoles, AFAIK, but that's not a perfect solution. But your X session
wouldn't end at all, it's just that another one would start. That's the
difference.

Tim