I am one of those users that plan most of their workspace layout beforehand. I have one for the editors, one for "research" browsing and note-taking, one for personal communication, one for official "shop talk", a number of them for personal coding projects and so on. This is a temporally stable choice of mine, something that changes on the same time scales as changes in the projects I'm working on, meaning weeks or months. I might need to add an extra dynamic workspace or two now and then on scales of minutes to a whole work day, but mostly the structure is fixed for much longer time spans.
Each time I log into G-S I have to arrange things so that those spaces are created and placed in the correct order (because I want to use my spacial memory to navigate them, and because if I don't it screws up my memorized numeric shortcuts). That includes launching applications I don't need right now just to keep spaces open in the correct order. Even worse, if I mistakenly close the wrong window causing a workspace to be scrapped, I have to start shuffling windows around to restore the correct disposition of spaces. I think that the "naming" mechanics would reflect very naturally a habit many users will form anyway: those users that have a somewhat stable usage pattern would find useful if the environment could be "tagged" to facilitate their orientation; workspaces become a task taxonomy rather than simple window containers. Something that a totally dynamic list of anonymous spaces is just not as good at. That's how real places with a function work, and thus how users are accustomed to think of: your bedroom is planned beforehand as the place where you retire at night. You can change the bed and drawers and all other furniture, but the function of the room is defined and furniture follows. The left corner of your desk might be where pile the articles you still have to read. That can be the "articles-to-read-spot" even when empty. Sure, I can virtually redefine the bedroom as the room where I put the bed every morning, or reorder my desk at 8 every day before I start studying. But why should I? Places with a known function are supposed to be persistent, at least until I redefine the function. Now I understand that someone could reply that this is a niche rather than common need (is it?), thus the way I tried to suggest an avenue for growth that was as transparent as possible to the "casual" user of workspaces and that could be mixed and matched with the current implementation. I can adapt and live with an extension that inhibits workspace collection, but - again - I think we're missing mapping a very natural behaviour and mental model here. On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 6:10 PM, David Prieto <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Elia, > >> The behaviour currently presented in the shell (dynamically managed, >> ad-hoc workspaces) is a great way to introduce even a casual user to >> the concept of separate workspaces and solving the simple problems of >> "I need more space for my windows" or "I don't want to see this window >> right now". > > Agreed. > >> >> As users become familiar with the concept, though, it's possible that >> many of them will start thinking along different lines, where the >> spaces are planned beforehand and consistently to organize their work >> (a space for the editor, a space for a "research" browser window, one >> for email and so on), in line with what power users of unixy OSs have >> been doing since the dawn of time. > > I think that the beauty of the new system is that it removes the need to > plan workspace management beforehand. Advanced users already can use a > dedicated workspace for a given app (they only have to middle-click its > launcher for it to open in the empty workspace) and drag existing windows in > order to group them in a single workspace, if they are related. > > My personal opinion is that what you are proposing would detract from the > simplicity of the new workspace system. So, what actual benefits would it > bring to the table? That is, why would an advanced user want to plan his > workspaces beforehand? How would it be better than doing it on the fly? > -- Elia _______________________________________________ gnome-shell-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
