Re: [Usability] How CDE presents workspaces and viewports.

[Brian Crescimanno <darksheer fotographix com>]

On Sat, 2001-12-08 at 23:32, Gregory Merchan wrote:

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


The closest thing I can think of wasn't actually provided by WM, but by
the X server itself.  The genereal concept being that you'd set your
resolution to something like 800x600 and then set your "Virtual
Resolution" to 1600x1200 which would create a scrolling effect on your
desktop.  

This is essentially how viewports work now.  However, instead of
creating the scrolling effect, the WM locks you over one section of the
desktop at a time, making it easier to work with.

Though the implementation is a bit different, it is essentially the same
concept.

The reason workspaces were such a great advantage over this method was
the fact that each one was a non-scrolling screen.  It gave the
advantages of having more workspace than your normal resolution desktop
would provide without having to deal with the "scrolling" effect.

B



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