Re: Window groups and multiple desktops

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Philipp Lohmann <Philipp Lohmann sun com> writes: 
> > I can see saying:
> >  a) each document is in its own group, with dialogs that
> >     are related to that document
> > or
> >  b) the whole app including all documents are in one group
> 
> > The problems with a) I can think of:
> >  - you can't label the application menu "applications,"
> >    it's actually the "main windows" menu
> >  - apps like the Gimp have toolboxes/dialogs that apply
> >    to all document windows; so what group do those go in?
> >  - app authors are more likely to screw it up
> 
> is a) not already covered by the transient hint ?

Indeed. OK, so a) is officially a bad idea. Group should mean b).
 
> Is an application based tasklist really useful ? A tasklist should 
> contain all the "document" windows of an app (e.g. all picture editing 
> windows of the gimp, or all documents of an office suit), because these 
> are separate tasks for the user that he wants to minimize (or whatever) 
> separately. The operations on the window group are IMHO better suited as 
> additional options like "minimize whole group". This is what the user 
> wants to do sometimes but not most times.

I think this is up to the desktop environment, not really something we
have to sort out on this list. Since the Mac is application-based I
think we should allow that option to implementors, it's not an
unreasonable thing to try to do.

Havoc