[geeks] Nokia is getting the Rick Belluzzo treatment...

[Shannon]

On 09-Jun-2011 02:23, Jonathan Groll wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:28:22 -0400, Shannon <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
>> My biggest beef with the Mac desktop is their utter failure with Spaces
>> to solve a problem that UNIX and X solutions solved 20 years ago. That
>> just boggles the mind.
>>
>> It looks like Lion, instead of fixing that, is going even worse in the
>> other direction.
> 
> Not sure what you mean here, since for the most part Spaces does what
> it should do - provide virtual desktops. Care to explain?

Well, first off they did fix a lot of it since it first came out, and I
run tools which fix some other issues, to the point where I can't
remember what is original and what is not.

That said...

My primary problem is that Alt-Tab for example wants to move across
multiple spaces instead of staying in the current one. It was very
common when Spaces first came out for it to have me zooming all over the
place.

I tend to use a virtual screen as a way of organizing tasks, so all of
my mail/news is in one, programming another, etc. Some things like the
mailer I'd want in all spaces, etc.

Spaces is (or was) designed around organizing apps in spaces rather than
tasks, so it wanted all of say Photoshop in one space.

I tended to do things like programming a graphics app, and I'd have a
window of my graphics editor on space 5. Alt-Tabbing through windows
would frequently zoom me to space 3, where the graphics app was
originally launched, but which I wanted to be used for some other project.

In other words, it seems Spaces was designed to organize applications,
whereas I tend to use Spaces to organize the tasks I am working on.

To explain a bit better, an example:

In space one I'm doing programming. I have several terminals, a window
from Acorn (my graphics editor), and a web browser.

In space two I'm working on a website. I have one terminal, another
Acorn Windows, a web browser, and some WWW tools.

Tabbing to apps in space one or using some other spaces command, I get
zoomed away to space two, which is not the task I'm currently working
on. So I have to either keep tabbing or whatever, or I have to manually
go back to space one.

Opening up an image in space two, it actually opens in space one and
might also warp me there. Again, its violating my idea of space two
being for the task I'm working on, effectively taking me to a different
project.

Opening up a new web page and it goes to a tab on an already open window
on a different space. This might actually be a browser error, but it
does add to the problem.

In my old X setups, apps stayed where I was, regardless of where
originally opened for the most part.  KDE and Gnome occasionally
violated that, but then they are Mac/Windows clones.

Anyway, I have software and some custom settings to avoid most of that
now, but it seems like Spaces is app focused, and what I want is my own
organization based more on tasks with mixed apps on each space.

There was a huge amount of discussion about this in Apple forums for a
long time, so some things may have changed. May be that some of the
software I run to fix that isn't needed, not sure.

I hope all that made sense, I'm pretty tired and calling it for the nite.

> I like the 'mixed-metaphor' of a dock (or dock-clone) as well as
> virtual desktops together. Sometimes it is just easier to click on an
> active application in the dock and to be taken directly to the
> application and its' desktop (without having to perform the mental
> arithmetic of remembering which desktop the app is on). Sure I have to
> reach for der mouse, but think it is worth it in that case.

I don't mind that when I actually want it. I hated it when it happened
and I wanted to stay in my current project/task focused Space.