Re: Major feature that is missing in gnome

[Andrew Sobala <andrew sobala net>]

On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 15:18, Pat Costello wrote:
> > 
> > <quote who="Rodney Dawes">
> > 
> > > Yes. But it is inconsistent with the rest of the "buttons". I could care
> > > less about the implementation too, as long as it's consistent with other
> > > implementations, as far as the UI is concerned.
> > 
> > ... and yet it *is* different. 'Show Desktop' is a toggle button, the others
> > are single-click launchers. You have three options:
> > 
> >   a) make the 'Show Desktop' toggle button flat to begin with, so you have a
> >   normal state and a depressed state.
> > 
> >   b) make all launchers proper 3D (non-toggle) buttons
> > 
> >   c) do something completely different
> > 
> > a) and b) sound hokey to me - I'll leave c) up to anyone who can think
> > straight at 2am.
> > 
> > - Jeff
> 
> I was piqued by the emergence of this interesting little button. Not so much by 
> the intrinsic nature of the button, but more by the functionality of the button. 
> What exactly does the button show? The desktop, you might reply. Well, what does 
> that mean exactly? My understanding is that the button shows the following: the 
> thing behind the icons + the desktop icons + the default panels. In other words, 
> the understanding behind this button is not the same as the Nautilus 
> understanding of the meaing of "desktop", which is just the thing behind the 
> icons. Does this mean after all that there is an engineering understanding of 
> "desktop" that is more inclusive than just the thing hanging in the back? 
> 
> Pat
> 

I'd say that the desktop is the "thing with icons on it", and that the
show desktop button does show the desktop - it just doesn't show
exclusively the desktop. It hides windows so you can see the desktop,
but not only the desktop.

But that's not a proper definition.

Come on guys, we're discussing this on desktop-devel-list. Now we're
trying to actually define what we're devel-ing here :-)

-- 
Andrew <andrew sobala net>         ~~  IRC: aes @ irc.gnome.org
http://www.penguins-of-fire.co.uk  ~~  http://www.advogato.org/person/aes

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