Workingsets

David Nolden zwabel at googlemail.com
Mon Feb 15 20:54:11 UTC 2010


Am Montag 15 Februar 2010 20:51:41 schrieb Milian Wolff:
> As I said during the sprint: I don't want them to be removed, instead we
> should make them usable. What they lack right now (in this order):
> 
> - working set switcher that does not require the mouse to be used. Since
>  they don't have names that identify them (yet and if they have at one
>  point, it will always be optional), I imagine this switcher more like one
>  of the KWin tab switchers: Show the workingset popups next to each other
>  and cycle through them to see the items opened in them. But it's important
>  to be able to see the contents of more than one set.
> 
> - a fast way to create a new set or close the current one - again without
> having to use the mouse
> 
> - a fast way to open the set for a given file, for example I tend to use
> workingsets for the plugins in KDevelop: Each one of those is (most of the
> time) confined to it's plugin folder. When I use quickopen to switch to
>  another plugin I'd like to have it open the workingset for that one (if I
>  have one open for it). Of course it cannot be the default action, since
>  someone might want to open a file into the currently opened workingset.
> 
> - introduce more of the polish from the workingset mockup

Those are all useful things, but I certainly wouldn't use any of them. Just to 
switch a working-set once in an hour, I wouldn't want to remember any new 
shortcuts, about the same way I don't need a shortcut to switch sessions.

I think these things also wouldn't lead to "more people using working-sets", 
as keyboard-shortcuts don't improve the discoverability, but if anything they 
are useful for those who are already hardcore-users of the feature.

Generally working-sets are something that no other IDE has, and we haven't 
even documented them until now, so it's clear that this feature doesn't have 
many users yet. Still it seems that some have discovered it and love it (for 
example http://invalidmagic.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/cmake-kdevelop-4/ ).

And if we want to improve the working-sets, then we have to think about why 
most don't use them. Missing keyboard-shortcuts probably aren't the reason, as 
you first have to use them to run into that problem.

So let's reformulate Niko's question to a useful one:
If you don't use them, why not?




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