: [Gllug] content

[Nix]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Simon Bunker spake:
> Why is it that most Linux screen shots on the net have 3 million windows on
> them? (OK slight exageration ;o) when most of the GUI's give extra virtual
> desktops. Is it just that no one uses them or that all of them look like
> that! Does anyone else use these much? I don't see it as much of an
> advantage, unless you have two monitors with one on each. Or I might put
> some downloads on another to hide it - I have never had to use all 4 (or 8)
> though.
> 
> Can anyone thing of a useful task for them or is it just yet another
> gimmick?

I'm going to invert this question and assume you're asking `why do the
screenshots have so damn many overlapping windows and does anyone
actually work like that' because everyone else has already answered the
other interpretation (`does anyone use those virtual desktop things', to
which my answer is an emphatic *yes*).

I think overlapping windows are good if you're trying to do something
while continuously referencing something else; I tend to have one big
window in the background in which I'm typing and a bunch of *much*
smaller ones floating on top of it in which I'm reading stuff &c. (This
conflicts violently with focus-autoraising, but focus-autoraise is the
Devil's child anyway.)

Oh, and they're good for status monitors; I have a sticky procmeter
running down the RHS of the screen at all times. (Oh, and a
daliclock. ;) )


For everything else, use virtual desktops and bind the desktop-switching
functions to keys. If you can arrange to have a 2D grid, so much the
better; I've managed a 3D grid made out of multiple 2D slices, and I'm
wondering if a 4D grid would be better; but that might consume too many
keys and be too hard to visualize :)

-- 
`It's all about bossing computers around. Users have to say "please".
Programmers get to say "do what I want NOW or the hard disk gets it".'
                        -- Richard Heathfield on the nature of programming

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