Re: Saving Activity/Workspace state?

[Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr>]

Le mercredi 28 janvier 2009 à 18:48 -0800, coulamac a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> I just subscribed to the list and have been perusing the archives.  Owen Taylor's message (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2009-January/msg00033.html) caught my eye.  I think the Activity/Workspace ideas are intriguing.
> 
> My main question is this: can you save a workspace state?
Currently: no. Actually there's no (committed) code for activities yet.
But I guess we can use gnome-session to save the activity state when the
user closes it, if it's what he wants - just like we do in GNOME (or did
in 2.22 before it's been broken) to save running apps' state when
closing the whole session. That would be an interesting feature.


> Let's say the user likes to 1) communicate with others, 2) browse the web, 3) write letters, and 4) make music.  The user has specific, multiple programs she always uses with each activity.  Can the user push the Activities button and be able to open that activity in a new workspace?  For example, the user wants to 1) communicate with others.  Can she select a "Communicate" activity, which was saved from a prior session, and automatically start up, say, Evolution, XChat-Gnome, Pidgin, and Ekiga?
For now, we don't try to start the apps automatically, but to show the
right launchers and documents in the bar. But starting them should be an
option, yes.
(BTW I'm not sure you want to communicate by all ways at the same time: writing a mail while chatting and looking for friends on Facebook is not really the best thing you can achieve with activities. ;-) )

> If so, how does the user save a particular workspace/activity?  How does she name it?  If workspace/activities are named, should the name go on the top bar somewhere?
In my mind (not yet in the code apart from a gchar* :-p ), you would
name an activity anyway you want, really just like a tag (think of
F-Spot). If somebody wants to create the GUI bits for that, it would be
nice... Else ATM I plan to use the name of the workspace, it's easier.

And I'd like to show the current activity somewhere, but I can't find
where. Any ideas?

> Thank you for your patience and attention.  I apologize if this has already been brought up, and I missed it.
No problem, this is maily brainstorming and experiments in code, so
please question our pseudo-plans... and give your ideas!