[Tfug] Speaking of desktops (little 'd')...

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 09:24:09PM -0800, Bexley Hall wrote:
>--- On Mon, 11/10/08, John Gruenenfelder <johng at as.arizona.edu> wrote:
>> I like "focus on map" as default, but an app
>> should not otherwise grab focus.
>
>Hmmm... note that a window can be mapped/unmapped at many times
>during its life.  Are you intending this to mean all such
>times or just when it is initially created?

My intention was only for initial creation.  But I recognize that this is a
problem wince a window "map" event is generic.  Unless the WM is keeping a lot
of state about new windows and parent/child hierarchies, it probably won't
know that this is the *first* window mapping and should be focused.

There are also subitems to this.  For example, if app A has focus and it
presents a dialog, then app A's dialog should get/take focus since it's
probably what the user wants.

In the end I suppose it depends a lot on how complex the WM author wants to
get.  I used AfterStep for years and one of my main complaints was its lousy
focus stealing/prevention code and poor window placement code.  For the most
part I put up with it, though.  I find that Gnome/metacity/compiz version of
such code behaves more inline with what I like without much tweaking.

>
>> I always turn on focus follows cursor *and* auto-raise
>> (500ms delay).  As for
>
><frown>  I dislike delays in the user interface.  After about
>300ms, people tend to get fidgetty -- "why isn't the thing
>responding to me?".  Deliberately adding a delay in order to
>implement a "feature" seems "forced" to me  :-/

Well, you could certainly alter the delay.  500ms is just my preference.
Gnome gives you a slider to set it.  And you always have the option of just
clicking and skipping the delay altogether.

>Do you like/prefer having incoming mail "announced"?
>Should "out of paper" be an audio annuciator (instead
>of a distraction on the screen)?
>
>What if you had a stock ticker with "speech" output... should
>it be babbling incessantly in the background?  Or, perhaps,
>configured to just announce changes in particular stocks of
>interest to you?  (I'm just making up imaginary apps that I
>can imagine "wanting to 'talk' to you" even though you are
>not actively "focused" on them)

This is one reason I'm generall a big fan of tray icons in whatever form the
WM/desktop chooses to present them.  They allow new information and alerts to
be displayed without forcing me to acknowledge them ASAP.  Tray icons with
bubble text are a grey area... To me that says "more critical - pay
attention!" but is often used for not so important items.

On my desktop I use the multi-monitor program gkrellm to display lots of
info.  It also has a mail indicator.  When I get new mail it beeps and
animates a small spinner.  It gets its message across and I can ignore it for
a long time if I wish.

>*Should* this be available to an application writer?  I.e.,
>this comes back to the question I posed in previous message:
>is there *ever* a time when the system should grab the server?
>And, now I ask, should an *application* be able to do this
>(knowing that developers are free to do whatever they want to
>do with the API you make available to them -- regardless of
>how stupid it may seem)?

I'd error on the side of yes.  How about the example of a UPS monitoring app.
Something critical occurs and it wants to you know right away.  That's not so
bad.  But, you're right that it can, and often is, easily abused.

>Is there any reason that all windows shouldn't be resizable?
>Even if the default behaviour is to just evenly pad the window's
>contents with blank space?

No... they should all be resizeable.  As another thread pointed out, though,
the Windows GUI doesn't take advantage of the extra space most of the time.
Compare that with GTK+ where the boxing method usually resizes everything for
you unless you explicitly tell it not to.  Maybe it doesn't do a stellar job,
but it's better than nothing.

>In terms of *applications*, my biggest peeve is applications
>asking me a question -- and then promptly forgetting my
>response (*preference*!) when they *next* ask the same
>question...

I'm sorry, I forgot what we were talking about...  :)


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
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