> Another thing, I don't think that switching between all the windows in
> every workspace is a good idea. What's the purpose of workspaces then?
I think the value of workspaces is the physical division of the space - example I want this app to take up a whole screen, and this screen to have appx, y, and z. I might have pidgin in one space and a full screen art app in another. i want to be able to quickly switch to pidgin when I hear the 'ping.' I think of people working across workspaces because it is spatially tidy, not just because they want to live in 1 and forget about 2 and 3 for a while.
I have long used workspaces this way, particularly on my netbook. I probably toggle between
workspaces more than I toggle between windows on a workspace on my netbook. This is less true on larger monitors, but even there I fill each workspace and use more when I run out of room. Sometimes I split up by task (eg a workspace with terminal, text editor, and web browser for programming and everything else on the next workspace.), but even there spacial considerations are present. I suspect that many people use them this way, and it's probably the reason that the Compiz cube seems more intuitive to them.
> If people like to cycle all their windows they can use 1 only
> workspace, which is the default.
Unless we enable a mode like <ctrl>+<alt>+<tab> in compiz (I tried this in metacity, but have no clue what silly switching
behavior it does instead.), which switches between all windows across all workspaces. That keybinding also makes a lot of sense for that behavior.
Agreed, and in most cases I think users will stay in this single workspace mode. But as I said, I think its about enabling spatial organization more than task organization (which I think is a false boundary sometimes).
I agree that there is a major spatial organization component, but there is some task switching aspect to it. However we should probably think more about how we might improve things from a spatial organization standpoint. One thing I can think of is letting windows show on both workspaces if they overlap spatially onto the next workspace.
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