Re: Metacity Proposal: Grouping Windows

[Mikael Carneholm <arch enterprise hb se>]

Citerar Ryan McDougall <ryan mcdougall telusplanet net>:

> Proposal to Add Grouping to Metacity, and some Rationale
> 
> 0. Abstract
> 
> Solution presented for solving problems associated with window
> management by allowing users to categorically organize windows by
> defining custom window groups, and performing window transformations on
> the objects that they represent in "desktop space".
> 

An interesting read, as this problem is somewhat related to something I have
thought of as well. I'm not sure where this solution is best implemented though,
ie if it should be a stand alone progam (preferably accessed from a starter in a
panel), a modification of the workspace applet, or an addition to metacity.

Abstract:
A proposed solution that makes GNOME the best drag-n-drop environment available.

Problem:
Dragging and dropping between eg one nautilus view to another can be hard if
there are lots of windows open in one workspace. You probably have an epiphany
window and a terminal open as well, and to drag from nautilus view 1 to nautilus
view 2 you have to minimize both epiphany and the terminal window before you can
perform the operation, if they both happen to hide view 2.

Proposed solution use case:
The user can either
1) Right-click on any window (brings up the metacity menu) -> choose
"Organize.." -> select those windows he/she wants to organize (by choosing from
a list containing the names/titles of the windows in the current workspace) ->
click a radiobutton for the desired method (horisontally | vertically |
text-wise) -> click "Ok"
2) Right-click on workspace applet (displays a popup meny) ->  choose "Organize
windows.." -> same as 1)
3) Click on a starter in panel (brings up same dialog as in 1) and 2) )

At first I thought that this would be useful for nautilus only, and thought of
proposing a menu alternative in nautilus. Quite soon, I realised that it would
be useful for more than just nautilus (example: you blog about some article on
the net, and need to be able to read the article in epiphany while writing in
the blog in BloGTK to refresh yourself on the subject)

The possibilities are many as well: if nautilus supported the action of dropping
text that was dragged from any text view (epiphany, gedit, ...), users could
mark text that was interesting in that text view, organize the window containing
the text together with a nautilus view, and create a new text file (or other desired
mime type) in their home dir just by dragging the marked text there.

Implementation details:
Initially, I think of three different useful ways to organize windows:
1. Horisontally
-------------
|  1  |   2  |
-------------
2. Vertically
-------------
|      1      |
-------------
|      2      |
-------------
3. Text wise (top left/right to bottom left/right, depending on locale)
-----------------
|  1     |  2    |
-----------------
| 3  |  4 |  5  |
-----------------

Summary:
GNOME could be famous for it's d-n-d support and the ease associated with
working in such an environment, if this functionality existed. Where this is
best implemented is yet to be decided (and the following discussion will
probably tell), but I believe that it is something that could, using the
language of today's modern youth, rock.

-- 
Mikael Carneholm, M.Sc
arch at the host called enterprise hb se 

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