RFC: app open only once instead of instances in the different activities

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday, October 27, 2011 17:11:34 Fania Bremmer wrote:
> Usecase: I want to check my private mails any time I want, not related
> to my current activity. Currenlty I need to create a "general" activity
> with that sort of apps in it, like also a chat program... I need to
> switch to this activity to be able to chat, even if I am using that chat
> maybe for different projects, contacts, activities.

we face the same issue in Plasma Desktop, and the solution currently 
implemented is to allow the user to associate an app/window with all 
activities.

perhaps this is another use case for the "C" in SLC with a "Connect to all 
activities" option?

it will, i think, be very hard to tell which apps we can launch safely on all 
versus just the current activitiy. we'd have to track each application, make a 
top-down decision and it would often seem random to the user. i'd suggest 
consistency over intelligence in this case due to that.

things get even harder if / when apps like kontact touch become activity 
aware. imagine having the ability to only show emails / email accounts related 
to the given activity. if the application can switch naturally, then we'd be 
better off showing that same app on multiple activities when launched; e.g. -> 
launching such an app again on a second activity would actually just associate 
the window with that activity. though to avoid user confusion, this would also 
mean that "closing" the app would mean not actually closing it but 
dissassociating it from that activity (so it would "keep running" in the other 
activities)

in the specific case of chat, this is really a case where the feature should 
not be an ap at all but a service that you can start and stop and which 
integrates with the shell itself. this is the approach the kde telepathy 
project is taking and i think it has real merit as it resolves these issues 
fairly cleanly.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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