WM: grouping applications (TAI)

[Matthew Woehlke]

Maciej Pilichowski wrote:
> On Friday 01 May 2009 18:07:13 Matthew Woehlke wrote:
>> Hmm. If we do trim down the actions any, I am starting to think
>> that spatial previous/next should be dropped;
> 
> True.
> 
>> in TAI it is 
>> redundant with left/right, and only slightly less so in GAI/FAI.
>> (But then you'd need four keys - u/d/l/r - instead of two to
>> navigate spatially in GAI/FAI, which is why I'm not sure if
>> dropping it would be a good idea or not.)
> 
> You need those 4 keys anyway, so smart+historic+spatial navigation 
> cover all possible way you would like to navigate container.
> 
> In GAI if I would like to go spatial navigating I would really like to 
> go up or down, not only next/previous.

previous/next would "wrap" much like tab order of widgets, so you would 
(eventually) get everywhere. I guess the question is if we still 
consider {previous,next}-spatial useful in addition to u/d/l/r (which is 
spatial by definition).

Remember, what we have is:
-{previous,next} ("smart")
-{previous,next}-historic
-{previous,next}-spatial
-{up,down,left,right} (spatial)

So -{previous,next}-spatial allows navigating everywhere spatially with 
only two keys, in a manner somewhat like tabbing through widgets within 
a window. Other than that it doesn't provide a lot over u/d/l/r.

Not considering wrapping, it is still possible that previous/left and 
next/right are not equivalent. For example:

+---+---+
|   |   |
| A |   |
|   | C |
+---+   |
|   |   |
| B +---+
|   | D |
+---+---+

...from B, left might go to C (especially if the part of C along B is 
taller than D), but next would always go to D (because C follows A, next 
can never go to C except from A).

(I'm assuming that previous/next are bias-horizontal... which maybe 
should be an option :-). Especially since we likely need an option for 
it to be LTR or RTL, anyway.)

-- 
Matthew
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