xrandr

[Michael Rudolph]

On Sunday 08 June 2008 01:46:06 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
>
> > Since there is a creative director now, I'm sure he will jump in
> > soon,
>
> this actually isn't an art issue as much as it is a coding and
> usability issue, but input from everyone is very welcome.
>
> > Perhaps we will find a sensible solution, if we start to think of
> > the problem in terms of the projected meaning of a panel in the
> > plasma workspace in, say, 4.2, 4.3 or even later?
>
> not sure what you mean by this? perhaps you could explain a bit more?


Hi Aaron,

I'm always rather disappointed by the lack of discussion around the 
important issues and seeing how the resulting lack of understanding and 
vision is then the cause of many problems around here, is somehow 
irritating to me. 

From this disappointment came my pronounced brevity. But after your 
friendly enquiry, my cynicism is suddenly blown away and I'm of course 
glad to elaborate:

I'm wondering what the purpose of a panel might be in a modern user 
interface? It might be a visual anchor, serve as orientation when the 
working area is larger than the actual screen (think virtual desktops 
or ZUIs). It houses tools for window management: there is a taskbar, a 
rather funny way of managing windows, because you literally manage the 
window, the graphical representation of an application. Slightly better 
is the system tray, because through it, you can actually interact with 
the application, not just its representation. A panel also serves the 
role of an organizer tray, similar to what can be found on real 
desktops, where you put tools for immediate access.

If we step back far enough, we might realize that the current panel is 
probably not the most obvious solution to serve all these purposes. For 
lack of discussion, my creativity and problem solving have 
unfortunately stopped at a window maker-like solution. (I'm aware that 
you recently voiced the wish (made the announcement?) that plasma 
should have all kinds of panels, window maker, os x dock, ... in the 
long run.) Anyway, other solutions might not even suffer the problem of 
scalability, that we face now.

I wanted to submit a scenario shortly, and regardless of other 
intentions, it also shows how many tasks, that are currently handled 
through a panel, could be solved in completely different ways.

I'll see, if I can manage to post it today.

michael