Re: [Usability] spatial desktop

[Steve Frécinaux <nudrema gmail com>]

Ritesh Khadgaray wrote:

> > Those should happen anyway, and they aren't really anything to do with 
> > a spatial interface either.
> rather than each application having a spatial mode option, why not use a
> common setting in gconf "/desktop/gnome/interface/spatial"

Because it would cause pain.

Currently, GNOME has desktop-wide settings for things like labels on 
toolbars and so on. But those are minor changes in the UI, and it's 
perfectly correct to define them desktop-wide (most applications provide 
their own setting for it, to make it possible to overwrite the desktop 
setting, too)

But spatial is another matter. Changing from non-spatial to spatial 
involves big UI changes (just look at nautilus as an example), and 
someone using a "spatial" desktop could as well want to keep a classical 
view for some apps. And depending on the context it might be more useful 
to have MDI instead of spatial things. It's really on an application basis.