Re: Pending 1.2 stuff

[Michael Toomim <toomim OCF Berkeley EDU>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Here is a bug on renumbering the workspaces in vertical orientation:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90143
>
> I haven't thought about this at all, so I have no opinion. Just
> throwing out the issue.

Since I don't see any explanation for why the change was better, here is 
an initial basic brainstorm:

Original Bug:
> However, the numbering goes like this:
>
> 1 5
> 2 6
> 3 7
> 4 8
>
> It'd be nicer if it's
>
> 1 2
> 3 4
> 5 6
> 7 8

And let me throw in a third contender:

5 1
6 2
7 3
8 4

Arguments for the A) and B), against C):
  o First workspace is in upper-left, last in lower-right

For A) and C), against B):
  o The general dimensions are conserved; a strip of workspaces is 
still a strip of workspaces.

For B):
  o The workspaces read like a book (left-to-right, top-to-bottom).
  o If a pager's UI exposes "workspace rows" and "number of workspaces" 
rather than "grid height" and "grid width" (see 
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86888) then it makes sense for 
 the workspace-grid to be a "wrapped sequence of workspaces" rather 
than a "static 2d grid".  Consequently, wrapping the sequence of 
workspaces at a different place isn't too big of a deal.  But I still 
think it's confusing.

For C), against A):
  o This is a 90-degree clockwise rotation of the horizontal pager.  If 
a user has both a horizontal and a vertical pager visible on the screen 
simultaneously, the relation between the two pagers is more spatially 
obvious with this rotation than with A), where the long columns are swapped.

Against B):
  o A pair of simultaneously visible vertical and horizontal pagers 
have a really weird, barely-spatial correspondence.

In the end, I don't see a clear winner or argument for why B) should be 
chosen.  This looks like a hard usability decision.  Default to the 
status quo?