Re: Major feature that is missing in gnome

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

Eugene opines: 
> 
> Before this discussion began, I understood that there were two meanings of
> "desktop" in use:
> 
> 1. GNOME desktop: The sum of all parts of GNOME, the complete environment. For
> example, "The GNOME desktop is an easy to use windows-based environment for
> users."
> 2. desktop: The Nautilus definition - background + icons. For example, "Use
> Nautilus to draw the desktop", "Use your home folder as the desktop".
> 
> Now we have a third meaning:
> 
> 3. desktop: background + icons + panels. For example, the "Show Desktop" 
button.
> 
> And I was just coming around to having two definitions! Meaning 1 is
> sufficiently conceptually different from 2 or 3, so I can live with that. But
> meanings 2 and 3 are too close to each other to avoid ambiguity in the UI and
> the documentation.
> 

Alex says that the panels were there in the first place, so that the Show 
Desktop button does nothing except clear the desktop (i.e. background + icons), 
and does nothing with the panels. Therefore, according to Alex's reasoning, the 
Show Desktop button does not imply that panels are part of the desktop. 
Personally, I don't think that users will perceive it that way, but there you 
go. 

> It will be interesting see responses to Calum's survey. I suspect that the key
> issue will be whether users consider panels to be part of their desktop or 
not. 

There are also those fundamentalists who believe that desktop = background, i.e. 
"the thing behind the icons" only. And just to expand the conceptual acrobatics, 
there are also those who equate "desktop" with "workspace". 

Pat