Re: Workspaces, applications, tasks and gnome-shell

[Filip Štědronský <regnarg seznam cz>]

Dne 4.1.2011 12:49:54 napsal Maciej Piechotka:
> Current status is that the gnome-shell is application oriented in
> similar way as phones under some assumptions and that is bad. Some users
> don't know what application they're using - I overhear talk when one
> respond he does not know what program he's using to write text. Forcing
> the application oriented view instead of file-oriented in GNOME 2[1] (in
> current shell there is no recent files in overview even). It is IMHO bad
> for several reasons:
It is. See further bellow.

>  - Some separates fullscreen applications by them (personally I think it
> should be addressed by other mechanism)
This is usually just a specific case of task-separation, where the tasks
just _happen_ to be single fullscreen apps (like the browser for example).
Workspaces are perfectly effective for this usage (and for many others)
and it would be quite complicating things to devise another handling of 
such a special case.

>  - Some design one-workspece-per-task. For example if I'm doing 3
> projects + 1 work each will have the currently opened text editor,
> terminal and browser window. Additionally first one will be used on
> general windows (like mail client). I don't want to be forced to reopen
> them each time I change task (say finish part of one project, check mail
> and find bug reported in another one)
This is the important point as we should, in condcord with human thinking
group things semantically, that is by meaning and not by type or by 
application. That's why it's wrong to organize everything into 
"collections" and "libraries" jailed inside applications and that's why
_it's wrong to group windows primarily by application and only secondarily
by workspace_. It's unnatural and counter-intuitive. It keeps you from
having related things together and forces you to work with unrelated things
together, just because they are related technically. As long as Alt+Tab
does anything but to switch windows _on the current workspace_, the Shell
remains unusable. We should also keep the current common behaviour of Alt+Tab
switching windows based on the order they were most recently used --- it's 
_extremely_ practical when you are switching a lot just between two or three 
windows--- the Alt-Tab order automagically organizes to minimize the number 
of keystrokes --- without caring about whether they are the same or different
applications. You won't care either. I want to say that the current metacity
Alt+Tab is a usage perfection far superior to any of the shell experiments,
because it adapts itself to people and their work, not to applications.

>  - Normal users should be allowed to not notice workspaces at all
If someone doesn't want to use workspaces, they use just a single one and
everything works all right. There is no special-case needed, because 
all workspace-local operations will be inherently global to such user,
when the only workspace = everything.

>  - Power users should not be alienated - it is them who eventually may
> contribute back
Power users use workspaces to separate tasks. Grouping applications across
workspaces is EVIL. It doesn't help the workspace-unaware people as they
have only a single workspace, so they don't need _any_ cross-workspace 
stuff.

All the shiny bonus thingies like saving/restoring of workspaces
will be always useful for more people to get to like workspaces,
but that's an extra. We shouldn't make it worse than it's now.


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