Re: Subtracting workspaces

[Dan Winship <danw gnome org>]

Brian Fleeger wrote:
> Ever since I first got the gnome-shell running, I have noticed that
> getting rid of empty workspaces along the periphery feels very
> mouse-intensive as I jump from workspace to workspace closing them. 
> This is especially the case since users have to click the Minus-sign in
> a particular order, and it appears to be a difficult motor pattern for
> my hands to adapt (maybe it's just me though…).  It doesn't help that
> adding spaces looks so pretty that I just keep adding more than I really
> need, and then have to close a bunch.

I agree both that it's difficult to remove a lot of workspaces, and also
that this isn't a use case that you'd really expect people to need in
the real world, unless they're just playing with the (+) button.

> One way would be to include a minus-sign nearby to the plus sign in the
> corner. 

Yes.

Anton Kerezov wrote:
> The logic of adding workspaces is too unpredictable
> though looking good.

Yes, unfortunately. It tries to be clever and keep the spatial relations
between the workspaces consistent, but no one understands this and so it
just ends up being confusing. But if we did a more naive/non-stable
ordering, then adding and removing workspaces would make you lose track
of things because they'd get moved around in the overlay.

An alternative possibility would be to let the user manage the layout of
workspaces in the overlay; give the workspaces titlebars and make them
draggable within the overlay just like windows are draggable outside the
overlay. Then the user can add and remove workspaces and rearrange them
into whatever layout he likes (though we'd still have to shrink them
sometimes to make room to add new ones).

Natan Yellin wrote:
> Has anyone considered getting rid of the + and - buttons altogether.
> I think it makes more sense to automatically add/subtract workspaces so
> that there's always one more workspace than the ones which are being
> used.

It seems like it would be awkward that there'd always be an empty
workspace there, and as soon as you added something to it, it would
create another one... but there could be some workable plan here.

-- Dan