Re: Suggestion for better utilising screen space when using a workspace

[William Jon McCann <william jon mccann gmail com>]

Hi,

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Domen Vrankar <domen vrankar gmail com> wrote:
> I like the way that this is done in Blender ( splitting/merging window area
> ). I've added a movie on how it looks on youtube
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuv5TO5BE-Q . I guess that this could also
> work great for gnome-shell whit a small difference that every time you would
> split an area you would get a menu ( similar to the ALT-TAB ) and there you
> would select the window, that you want to have in that area.

Thanks for the link to the blender video.  That is neat and I haven't
seen that before.

> This window management wouldn't have the functionality of resizing windows -
> the windows themselves would be the splitting boxes.

So there are a few differences here.  One is that some applications
will have their own built-in views / space segmentation (emacs,
eclipse, etc).  Another is that applications aren't really designed
for running is these small areas and don't really cope with it well.
Most applications these days are designed for sovereign postures (in
Cooper terminology) where they expect a great deal of screen real
estate (for many people maximized is the norm).  I'm not sure we can
or should support arbitrary splitting of the screen.  I'm a fan of
just using the windows style side-by-side mode.

> Still there are two things that I dislike about the blender way. The first
> is that you have to be on the thin border of the window to split it. This
> would have to be made easier -> make borders around windows wider while in
> this mode or have a button that temporarily widens the lines between the
> windows. The second one is that the split/merge options menu that opens is
> too small - that two options would have to be larger ( like ALT-TAB menu ).
>
> The second dislike solution could also be extended so that if you for e.g.
> hold CTRL pressed it means that you want to split and if you hold ALT
> pressed means that you want to merge ( another speed gain + you still have
> the menu option for the users that don't want to use button shortcuts option
> ).
>
> I guess that it would also be good to have a method to quickly switch
> between the currently used "resize and move the window wherever you like"
> and the technique described above and a few default window layouts buttons
> (  for e.g. two windows side by side, three windows - the bottom two side by
> side and the last one on top of them ).

The overlapping vs. tiled discussions are as old as desktop computing.
 I'm sure we aren't going to end them here.  :)

Thanks,
Jon