AW: Theme patriation

["Christoph Burgdorf" <Christoph Burgdorf bvsn org>]

I would like to echo a demand fort hat in gnome. Choosing on which vDesktop an app would start is something I have been missing since I became familiar with the concept of vDesktops in Linux. 

I don't even think this is some geeky feature for expert users. People are changing in the way they interact with virtual stuff and they become familiar with new concepts of interaction. If you compare how a standard user used a Windows 95 computer and compare it now to a standard user of a modern operating system such as Ubuntu 8.10 - you can see that the way has changed a lot (drag and drop, grouped windows in task bar, tabbed browsing etc.)

The expert user will just adopt it faster and will help to improve it to a well matured feature but normal users will also become familiar with it. I wish you could just right click on an app launcher > start on desktop > e.g. 3. Even a normal user would understand it that way...

Bye

Christoph

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: gtk-devel-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:gtk-devel-list-bounces gnome org] Im Auftrag von Allin Cottrell
Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. Oktober 2008 01:34
An: Iain *
Cc: gtk-devel-list gnome org
Betreff: Re: Theme patriation

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Iain * wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Rui Tiago Cação Matos
> <tiagomatos gmail com> wrote:
> > 2008/10/27 Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>:
> >>> IMO decorating a window belongs in the WM, not all X applications use
> >>> GTK as rendering toolkit...
> >>
> >> And not all users of gnome use Metacity as WM.
> >
> > IIUC from Owen's post[1] and things really end up going that way, you
> > won't have much coice. And that's a good thing.
> 
> Thats irrelevant to this discussion.
> GTK apps cans still be run under other window managers.

So long as the apps in question operate gracefully if they don't 
find metacity to do their bidding, then OK.  

However, I strongly object to the idea that it's "a good thing" if 
there's no choice of window manager under gnome.  IMO, sawfish 
remains greatly superior to metacity if you're an "expert" user, 
and I don't see why gnome should wish to drive away expert users.

Here are just a couple of reasons for my preference.  If they're 
out-of-date with regard to metacity, please let me know.

1) I like to run an analog clock on my desktop.  Gnome doesn't 
provide one, but xclock works fine.  But xclock looks stupid with 
window decorations, you want it to blend with the background.  
Using sawfish, it's trivial to specify (via the GUI) that xclock 
should be displayed without decorations; I haven't found a way to 
do that in metacity.

2) If desktop software supports multiple virtual desktops -- and 
of course it should -- it seems rudimentary that you should be 
able to specify that a given app always starts on desktop N.  
E.g., I do web-browsing on desktop 3, so under sawfish I specify 
(via the GUI) that firefox starts on desktop 3.  Again, I haven't 
found a way to do this under metacity.

Allin Cottrell