Re: desktop layout patch

[Olivier Chapuis <olivier chapuis free fr>]

On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 08:57:38AM +0200, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > It does not seem that there is a consensus on the list for this
> > property. At least there is a message of Matthias Clasen with
> > an objection concerning the use of manager selection.
> 
> No. What I said is that multiple pagers will step on each others 
> toes *unless* we use a manager selection in the way Havoc wrote in 
> his patch. I still think that the idea of letting the pager decide
> about the layout will not really work with multiple pagers, since
> all but the layout master have to cope with the given layout and
> we will end up having to display an ugly visual indication about this
> fact (i.e. something transporting the message "Sorry, I have to display
> the desktops vertically, since the panel I'm on is vertical although the
> actual geometry is horizontal. I can't change this since I'm not the 
> layout
> master. If you find this confusing, you're right")
> 
> > I'm not against this new property (as I say before). But what
> > I understand is that it is really useful for GNOME and KDE because
> > GNOME and KDE do not support large desktop!
> > You want desktops layer for edge switching if I well understand.
> > But why do you not use large desktop?  A layout of X=4 and Y=3
> > is more or less equivalent (for the user) to NUMBER_OF_DESKTOP=1 and
> > DESKTOP_GEOMETRY= X*screen_width, Y*screen_height. Of course with
> > this the layout is given for free and it does not seem that there
> > are problems about "nominating one pager as the "layout master" 
> > (using a manager selection)" (as say Matthias Clasen).
> > 
> > So now why we have large desktop and multiple desktops?
> 
> Because the people working on choice-reduction for Gnome 2 thought that 
> this feature can be discussed away by saying that the distinction between
> large and multiple desktops is "artificial" and that in order to get the
> lost functionality back, you will "only" have to implement windows 
> appearing on multiple desktops.
>

I think that the difference between large and multiple desktops is not
so artificial and what you explain below shows that. I see also
a difference which come from my education: I never _work_ with windows
and Mac but with fvwm and some times with GNOME1+fvwm. What
I learn is that desktops are "independent" as a large desktop allows
edge scrolling ("large desktop allows you to pretend that your video
screen is  really  quite  large")

> I.e, if a window crosses the edge of two desktops, 
> it
> should appear in both:
> 
> +---------------+---------------+
> |               |               |
> |          +---------+          |
> |          |         |          |
> |          +---------+          |
> |               |               |
> +---------------+---------------+
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think this is really well thought out. Just consider how this 
> interacts with
>  _NET_WM_DESKTOP=0xFFFFFFFF. The only logical way would be the following, 
> which obviously
> can't be implemented under X.
> 
> +---------------+---------------+
> |               |               |
> |----+     +---------+    +-----|
> |    |     |         |    |     |
> |----+     +---------+    +-----|
> |               |               |
> +---------------+---------------+
> 
> 
> 
> The bottom line is: I think you are right, this addition spoils the 
> internal consistency of the EWMH, 
> but it is probably better to let it in nevertheless, since 
> interoperability is generally considered more 
> important than consistency.
>

Well GNOME2/KDE>=2 decides to use only multiple desktops, fine. But,
after that they want that multiple desktops share some properties
of large desktops and this leads to inconsistency in this spec.
IMHO, this is not acceptable.

Regards, Olivier

Notes:
- I think that KDE3 use dcop and not KDE_NET_* properties for
desktops layer.
- <become stupid>Maybe GNOME3 will not support multiple desktops
neither large desktops?</sorry> I predict some flame ward in the
gnome users mailing lists about this desktops "problem".
- Can we swallow an arbitrary pager in GNOME2 panel, as it is
possible with GNOME1?