Re: Nautilus desktop icons and metacity

[Petri Kanerva <petri kanerva surfeu fi>]

On Sun, 2003-06-01 at 15:50, D. D. Brierton wrote:
> > It would be somewaht idiotic for a windowmanger to
> > start avoiding desktop icons.
> 
> If that is the case (because, for example, the window placement
> algorithm would become so complex it would be unusably slow) then all
> the more reason to have the default position of the icons somewhere that
> will remain visible most of the time.
90% of the windows I use, I use them maximized, so the desktop is almost
always covered. So I'm used to use a keybinding to make the desktop
visible when I need it. Other way is to leave one workspace without any
windows. Just go to that workspace and you'll see all icons on the
desktop. In both cases it's not so hard.

> > You can always bind a key to the "show
> > desktop" function and use that when you want to see the desktop icons.
> > It's just one shortcut away.
> 
> I thought that something is more usable if it takes only one click to
> perform an action than if it takes two.

1 keyboard shortcut and a click after that. Not so much asked, unless
your extremely lazy.

> > And you can always move the icons to the
> > right side by yourself.
> 
> Again, that won't work for icons which appear and disappear as CDs are
> inserted and ejected, and USB and FireWire devices are connected and
> disconnected. At the moment, if I have several windows open and connect
> a device I don't even get the visual cue that it has been mounted
> because the icon that appears for it on the desktop is obscured by my
> open windows.
Well, atleast for CDs and floppys the positions are remebered from mount
to mount, if you use the latest 2.3.2 Nautilus. It's new desktop code
made the change. I believe it's works the same way with hotpluggable
devices. So, you move it once to the right and it stays there after
that.


> > I personally see no valid points in your mail.
> 
> None? I can understand that you may think that the arguments for having
> desktop icons on the left outweigh the arguments for having them on the
> right, but there *are* patently arguments for having them on the right -
> I've just articulated them.

I just said I personally don't see any points there. That doesn't mean
there arent points to someone else.


And after reading your reply to Steve Homers mail, it just seems that
you want Gnome to behave just like OSX. Hmm, so, why not get a mac and
use OSX if that's the functionality you want.

 Petri