Re: Nautilus desktop icons and metacity

["D. D. Brierton" <darren dzr-web com>]

On Sun, 2003-06-01 at 20:05, Petri Kanerva wrote:

> 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.

I agree that it isn't *hard*, but if the desktop icons were on the right
it wouldn't be necessary. Perhaps it's because you normally keep your
windows maximised that you don't appreciate the point I'm trying to
make: if the desktop icons were on the right then they wouldn't get
immediately covered over by open (non-maximised) windows, and that seems
like a more useful behaviour.

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

It isn't a question of laziness. Why make something harder for people
when it is so easy to make it simpler for them? Why have desktop icons
covered by the default window placement when it is so easy to not do
this?

> 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.

Well, in that case, that might constitute a solution for me, although I
don't understand your resistance to placing them on the right in the
first place.

> 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.

I don't want GNOME to behave just like Mac OSX, and I don't want to use
Mac OSX I want to use GNU/Linux and GNOME! You have taken my remarks out
of context: Steve said that most desktop environments place their
desktop icons on the left, and placing them on the right might confuse
users and break with well understood convention. I simply mentioned the
fact that Macs constituted a counterexample to that claim.

The strange thing is that you are responding to me as if I were
suggesting the most outlandish or ridiculous thing in the world, or as
if I had some secret agenda. Please explain what exactly is so
extraordinary about suggesting a different side of the desktop for
placing desktop icons - one which is more consistent with the default
window placement strategy.

-- 
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D. D. Brierton            darren dzr-web com          www.dzr-web.com
       Trying is the first step towards failure (Homer Simpson)
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