NWI: metaphor needed?

[Diego Moya]

2009/6/29 Maciej Pilichowski <bluedzins at wp.pl>:
> On Monday 29 June 2009 15:51:42 Diego Moya wrote:
>> I'm specially worried about how NWI handles persistence of the
>> built structures/containers. It seems to related to sessions,
>
> No, it just wrong explanation then (in the summary) ;-). If you work
> with tandem of Konqueror+Kate a lot, you can save such container as
> preset, and then launch not Konqueror and Kate separately, but as
> already made container (both applications would launch at once).

"When you turn the session management on (at KDE level), SM not only
restores the application instances, but also recreates container."

This sentence lead me to think an open container would be recovered in
the next session together with the working document ("application
instances"). This had me daydreaming about its possibilities as a
user-centered persistence layer.


Then, what I get is that all the work to use containers must be
manually requested by the user? :-(
Then I'm afraid this won't be of much use for me, as these
micro-management required steps put off me. It already happens with
virtual desktops - users (myself included) don't use them because you
must explicitly assign windows to desktops, and that's a cumbersome
additional task.

It would be much useful to me if containers were associated to
specific documents or document types, as new actions (a la "open
with..."). I'm more prone to use new features when they're integrated
in my workflow than if I have to remember their existence and go out
of my way to launch them.

Do your design contemplate this possibility to open containers as task
for a particular class of document?



> c) I am very sceptical about "30 years old...", "new interfaces" ;-)
Me too. But scepticism must be trumped by evidence, and I've already
seen the signs for the new approaches. IMO these new interfaces will
be evolutionary, not revolutionary, and will get the best parts from
both the desktop and the web applications.

> NWI is about windows, sorry.
So no hope to integrate this windows functionality in an encompassing
metaphor for document handling? Like the Desktop metaphor is to the
Task bar "geometrical mechanism"?