An alternative suggestion...

I can not help but think that at least part of the problem is that gnome (and every other gui) does not have a persistent current directory, unlike any tui (e.g. bash). When I am working in a shell, much of the commands I can give the computer are dependent upon my current working directory, but somehow that never was translated to any of the gui environments. Maybe each workspace needs a current working directory that can be changed from the panel or any of the programs in that workspace, and that is enforced for all programs in that workspace.