I must be out of the mainstream :-) [LWN.net]

I must be out of the mainstream :-)

Posted Aug 12, 2010 3:20 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242)
Parent article: GUADEC: Owen Taylor on GNOME Shell

All these desktop plans, talk of "recent documents", application groups ... I sometimes wonder what kind of activity actually uses such concepts. I keep applications open; I use them to open documents. I don't double click on icons in a file manager to open them. I use virtual windows or desktops, whatever they are called, to group my activities, and just bop around with arrow keys to get there. Hot corner -- why? I dedicate some key combo to bring up menus.

I get all the flexibility I need from fvwm, and it doesn't take a lot of space or memory or attention. I am woefully out of date with these new fangled computer concepts. Pretty soon I'll be setting in my rocking chair on my porch with my M1 Garand, protecting my lawn. Only I don't have a lawn, it too takes too much care and attention. Maybe I'll just lay out some astroturf.

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I must be out of the mainstream :-)

Posted Aug 12, 2010 7:51 UTC (Thu) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]

> All these desktop plans, talk of "recent documents", application groups ...

Recent documents can be very nice even if you are just working on a large software project with lots of files in it.

I must be out of the mainstream :-)

Posted Aug 12, 2010 17:20 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

I use a single gvim instance to open files in the software project - and actually don't close them, so I just type :b <part-of-filename> followed by TAB and I instantly got to the file. I don't think that the desktop environment should have anything to do with it...

I must be out of the mainstream :-)

Posted Aug 12, 2010 19:42 UTC (Thu) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]

> I use a single gvim instance to open files in the software project - and actually don't close them, so I just type :b <part-of-filename> followed by TAB and I instantly got to the file. I don't think that the desktop environment should have anything to do with it...

But to my mind using "recent documents" for the purpose does fit in well with the "one tool for one job" principle. That doesn't necessarily mean the "recent documents" implementation in GNOME 2 of course - perhaps the one in GNOME 3? I would also not mind sufficiently good document/window/application management that we could dispense with the MDI/tabbed window orgy that is currently fashionable - it seems to me that that definitely is the job of something in the desktop environment (window manager, task manager, whatever).

I'm just not so sure if GNOME 3/GNOME Shell as such fits in so well with the "one tool for one job" thing though.

I must be out of the mainstream :-)

Posted Aug 16, 2010 12:19 UTC (Mon) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

I do exactly the same thing... except with E16 instead of fvwm.

The only major innovation in my workflow in the last 10 years is when I went from one-fullscreen-web-browser-per-desktop to one web browser with lots of tabs. No other UI 'improvements' since virtual desktops have impacted me, except in negative ways (I'm looking at you Mr. GTK File Picker).