Hmmm... Been a couple of months since I stuck my nose into this forum and I don't see any response to this message. Some of this is frustrating me as well to the point of getting ready to abandon gnome entirely as a lost cause. On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 08:16:58AM -0400, Larry W. Virden wrote: : > Issue 2: the user has various applications with more data > than will fit on one window, and scrolling the graphical > application windows takes too long. The users are currently using > OpenWindows and the open windows virtual window manager, which > provides them these two abilities, which they have felt is acceptable. > 1. Ability to create GUI windows that can be placed across virtual > desktops. That is to say, a user might have one large application that > sits across 4 different virtual desktops and then switch desktops > to see relevant portions. I use to do this a lot under OpenWindows and never liked the DCE "rooms" method. But early versions of Gnome had BOTH! Actually, I got use to using both under Enlightenment and then found that Gnome with SawFish supported it very nicely as well. That turned out to be the best of all possible worlds. I've operated with a multidimensional workspace of 6 desktops, each of which was 4 screens wide and 3 screens high, and the ability to short cut hop between any of them at high speed. Great for organizing my work... Then someone decided to break backwards compatibility and Gnome2 busted the virtual desktop size. That has functionally locked me into RedHat 7.3 with no way to upgrade to 8 or 9 or beyond because the desktops are all broken with no working configurations available. There were some earlier messages about a fix going into a library, libwnck, IIRC, to support virtual desktop sizes, but I've yet to figure out how to enable it in Gnome, even on Fedora core which should be well past when those patches were integrated. Where is the on switch for that FEATURE? > 2. Ability to switch virtual desktops as close to instantly as possible. > Metacity does not provide a fast transition - one sits and watches each > window drawn and contents refilled. Even after specifying minimal > themes, turning off animations, etc., the time taken to switch > virtual desktops is longer than the users require. I haven't noticed that, so much. I've several machines with RedHat 8 and RedHat 9 and Fedora on them (test machines - which is why I know I can't switch over my primary workstation because the bugs that broke the virtual desktop sizes are apparently still screwed up). I hadn't notice any particular lag there. Bottom line... Destroying virtual desktop sizes was a tactical mistake which (amongst others) got Gnome lambasted in several forums. But with the fixes to libwnck, it should now be capable of supporting a valuable feature that had been in the previous version of Gnome (and NO you CAN NOT do everything with the simplistic desktop model that you can with virtual desktops or the hybrid model). But I still can't find how to enable it. Is it still broken? Is there any way to fix it or turn it back on? Funny... I write this as I'm currently downloading the latest version of enlightenment out of my frustration over my inability to upgrade because of this design mistake in Gnome. Sigh... Rule number 1: Never break a feature that is actively in use. Rule number 2: Even if you fix it, people will remember you broke it. Rule number 3: Remember rules one and two. Mike -- Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | mhw WittsEnd com /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/ | (678) 463-0932 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/ NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!
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