[Usability] How CDE presents workspaces and viewports.

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

CDE provided four workspaces by default. They appeared as buttons in the center
of the CDE panel.

    /---------------------------\
    \    +-------+ +-------+    /
    /    | One   | | Two   |    \
    \    +-------+ +-------+    /
    /    +-------+ +-------+    \
    \    | Three | | Four  |    /
    /    +-------+ +-------+    \
    \---------------------------/

(sides snipped)

The buttons were indicator-less radio buttons. (i.e., only one is selected at
any time and it is indicated by looking pushed in.)

Clicking on the button of the current workspace changed it into an entry
widget so the workspace could be named. I've written a similar control:
 http://www.phys.lsu.edu/students/merchan/GNOME/WorkspaceSwitch.tar.gz

(No promise that it works right now. It's been 7 months without update
 or even a glance, and it was a one night hack.)

There were no icons on the root (whatever you want to call it) by default.
Windows could be iconified to actual icons and file manager icons could
be placed on the workspace. The workspaces were distinct visually because 
they used different backgrounds. Iconified windows and file manager icons
appeared only on the workspace to which they had been placed; workspaces had
a distinct appearance and operated accordingly.

If CDE (or MWM or dtwm, whichever) provided a viewport over a 
larger-than-screen workspace, I was unaware of it.


The CDE workspaces were the first I was ever exposed to. How they worked was
readily apparent mostly because the background image changed.


Cheers,
Greg Merchan