activities

[Marco Martin]

On Friday 05 February 2010, Chani wrote:
> hey guys :) this is a bit of a pre-emptive email... ramblurr was saying
> he'd email some questions, and yagami was having ideas in #kwin, and
> there's some possible confusion I'd like to address, so... well, here I
> am.
> 
> We seem to have two or three definitions of the word "activity" in kdebase
> now. Oops.
> First, there's the original: desktop containments.
> Second, there's the nepomuk activities: they're UIDs that can have an
> associated name, and then other arbitrary things can be associated with
> them. Third, there's my "everything you need for what you're working on"
> plan, which will pull in kwin and new session stuff and applications, and
> *probably* will be tied to a set of containments (one containment, for
> those of us with one screen). Hopefully this will merge with nepomuk's
> activity stuff, so we can count only two definitions of "activity" in kde.

what i see as the "real" one is the nepomuk one, the plasma ones i see more as 
"placeholders" or "visual representations" of activities
(i would even tempted to ditch that at all and make widgets in the same 
containment behave differently when the activity chnges but that would add 
even more complexity if the current containment was not tied to activities)

soo, the containment would be the perfect thing to visualize an activity, 
there is only the multimonitor and the pervirtualmonstruosity that breaks this 
perfect paradigm :/ so indeed an activity must become a -set-
 of containments.
note that the pervirtualmonstruosity wouldn't be a problem anymore if we take 
the route of an activity is a virtual desktop

> And so, confusion abounds! Oh joy :/
> The first thing that comes to mind is, can we rename one of these concepts?
> We have activities "the group of widgets on your desktop" and activities
> "the windows/files/whatever for your current project". Can someone come up
> with a different name for one? I'd take Context but aaron's already
> defined that to mean activity+geolocation.

in the end the more clear name it could have i think is just "widget set"

> [...]
> 
> Here's where I run up against cruel reality, though. Virtual desktops have
> a lot of limitations most people don't notice. Some of them can be fixed,
> some miight be fixable or could be worked around, and some are just evil.
> 
> I think it's *possible* to fake removing a virtual desktop that isn't the
> last one. I worry about small things like applications assuming they're on
> exactly one desktop.  I don't think it's possible to beat the composite
> monster, though.

what about showing the window greyed out with a loading spinner on it? (and if 
the app has been in that activity before, maybe show an old screenshot of it 
instead of the actual app?)
also, in a grid effect most of the times probably the window will be so small 
to not b able to distinguish what's inside anyways...
those things just mask the problem but i think  is the only thing we can do...

> [...]
> so, yeah, two open issues I'd like feedback on:
> how can we make activities simple and non-threatening to the new user?
> what do we do about a dual-monitor computer having two activities
> (desktopcontainments) for each activity (in nepomuk)?

- it should be something really prominent, that doesn't get forgotten
- it should be really flashy (heck, the desktop cube made my sister grasp the 
virtual desktop concept, and she is really the type "I'm forced to use 
computers but i don't want to learn because they are a tool of satan and they 
should burn in hell")
- so someting with less text possible and more images and drag and drop as 
possible (even activity, context, whatever is too jargon, really)

there were so much ideas in the past,
- a desktop grid like, did with or without virtual desktops: problem of 
windows not showing their real content and other virtual desktop limitations. 
also been pointed out that this approach is inherently modal. is a problem? 
maybe not since if i want to change what i'm doing is a modal action per se.

- a strip that looks like the widget explorer, not modal and we don't have 
virtual desktop problems. thumbnails becomes very little however and is an 
advantage because one can not worry about wrong contents anymore, but a 
disadvantage because they're so little that they could become almost 
meaningless (they should just show the containment probably, and different 
wallpaper for each contaiment shoud be almost enforced)

- or we could go barebone, just text, with an activitybar, a popup menu, a 
secondary taskbar, whatever. it will probably be the first prototype anyways 
and could be the "faster" to use in the end, but it will have a big problem of 
learnability..

Cheers,
Marco Martin