Re: Gnome2 and viewports

[Travis Saling <trav u washington edu>]

> (I'm not calling them virtual desktops, I'm calling them workspaces.
>  "virtual desktop" is too damn long to type and it's not what they are
>  called in the defualt window manager.)
> 
> Except that it doesn't make any sense for workspaces. How do you know
> which workspace you'll land on when you go off a side? You don't
> and shouldn't expect to because workspaces are not contiguous; if they
> were then you'd expect to see some overhang on from the adjacent
> workspace when a window is partially off-screen there.

I did some playing around in Gnome/Sawfish with edge-flipping between
workspaces. No viewports were defined (or more correctly the viewport
was set to be the same size as the workspace). The behavior just felt
weird - moving the mouse off screen to the right did put you on the next
workspace, but if instead you moved the mouse downward it would
accomplish exactly the same thing (if you started on desktop N, both
types of movement would put you on desktop N+1). While this may be
technically correct behavior given the discontinuity between workspaces,
it is somewhat counterintuinot intuitive at all.tive.

But those behaviors I can think of that would match a more intuitive
approach would require an artificial spacial relationship between
workspaces - basically turning them into ersatz viewports. ;-) 

-- 
Travis Saling
Webmaster, UW Electrical Engineering
trav u washington edu / webmaster ee washington edu
(206) 543-8984