The future of virtual desktops

[Gábor Lehel]

2011/3/3 Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org>:
> On Friday, February 25, 2011, you wrote:
>>
>> First of all, though, a question: what is the Plasma project's goal
>> with activities? I'm assuming the goal is to have people notice them,
>> be intrigued by them, start using them, benefit from them, and tell
>> other people about them, who then start the process anew; but maybe
>> that's mistaken and it's something different -- say, something more
>> modest like, "well it's there if people want it, but if they don't we
>> don't really care", maybe.
>
> that is not the goal _at all_. the goal is to give people who would appreciate
> being able to separate information and interactivity on their computer/device
> by concept a way to do so.
>
> it's not a marketing gimmick and i don't particularly care if people who don't
> need or want to create topical differentiation between their
> apps/docs/widgets/information ever use or even notice activities. :)
>
>> The resulting confusion is a big part of why the evil
>> separate-activity-per-virtual-desktop option was born.
>
> no it isn't. PVD was born because we got tired of listening to people asking
> for different wallpapers on each virtual desktop. combined with the
> theoretical benefit of different widgets on each virtual desktop, we gave in
> and implemented them.
>
> let's not rewrite history here :)
>
>> Now, activities
>> are no longer spatial, which was a good decision; but instead
>> activities are invading the conceptual territory of virtual desktops
>> from a different direction: managing groups of windows.
>
> that's a stretch. virtual desktops "manage" groups of windows by keeping
> different sets of them together; activities allow one to associate windows
> with concepts. yes, one can use virtual desktops to do the same, but that's
> rather uninteresting. and if that confuses people, so be it. it's essentially
> a self-imposed confusion.
>
> as activities extend further and further beyond "just" widgets and windows,
> the difference will become clearer. let's not try to screw with things just
> because right now the differences aren't so immediately obvious to some people
> right now when they likely will be once we achieve our goals fully.
>
>> My fear is that when people are confronted with two advanced features
>> which are both intended for grouping windows, the result will either
>> be that they get royally confused (as with spatial activities), or
>> that they go "eh, this is a bit difficult, I don't feel like dealing
>> with it right now", and then they never get around trying it, and
>> instead are just left with a vague negative impression.
>
> how about we concentrate first on the people who will become fans of the idea
> immediately because of what activities offer instead of chasing people who are
> poorly placed to appreciate them in the first place? :)
>
>> I would assume that only a few very advanced users would really want
>> to use both at the same time; therefore my proposed solution would be
>> to move virtual desktops into the settings alongside other power-user
>> window management features like tabbing and tiling (though I'm open to
>> being persuaded of others).
>
> that will only piss off users of virtual desktops and do ~zero to help those
> who don't. people don't randomly bump into virtual desktops. i say that after
> ~15 years of (frustratingly ;) watching people use X Window ;)
>
>> The case for activities could be made much
>> more effectively if you didn't have to detour into "how is this
>> different from virtual desktops, why do we have both" every half
>> sentence, and could instead say "activities are better than virtual
>> desktops: here is why". And then you could just say at the end "we
>> acknowledge that while activities are better for the majority of use
>> cases, there are still some where virtual desktops are useful; if you
>> want them, you can still turn them on in the settings". The whole
>
> or we could just start ignoring people who keep trying to conflate virtual
> desktops with activities. the problem is not with activities or virtual
> desktops but people who want to force some sort of harmonized story between
> them. they aren't related. period. as such, i feel no need to make a case for
> activities over virtual desktops. they aren't better, they are different. if
> someone doesn't like them or doesn't "get" them, they don't have to use them.
> i'd rather spend our time and energy, and the effort in designing activities,
> on people who will actually use activities because they see the value in them.

I feel like this is the nub of our disagreement. I don't think anyone
is *trying* to conflate the two. They're *getting* confused, as a
basic reaction, completely apart from any kind of deliberate intent.
And this prevents them from seeing the value in activities. When
people see a confusing dialog box (or user interface of whatever kind)
they don't get confused by it because they like being confused, it
happens because they intuit that things should work a certain way and
they turn out not to; or because the information presented is too
inscrutable or overwhelming and they are unable to intuit anything at
all. This is kind of like that. I think that multiple people having
felt the need to write long blog posts explaining the distinction is
evidence that people are having trouble with it.

I'm not even sure that putting "virtual desktops and activities are
unrelated, stop conflating them!" out there in big red letters would
help; people can't make their brains work differently than they do,
and it's completely natural that brains always try to understand a new
thing in terms of some seemingly-similar already familiar thing. Come
to think of it, though -- perhaps giving them some more appropriate
familiar thing to latch onto would help? "Don't think of activities
like virtual desktops, think of them like X instead", and so.

Anyway, I don't think it makes sense to belabor the discussion very
much further. I just wanted to lay out my thoughts once, clearly, for
the record, in case anyone found them convincing. Throwing them
against the wall, so to speak. Hopefully, you will turn out to have
been right. Good luck. :)

(And thanks for the reply; I thought I had managed to kill the thread
with my longwindedness...)

>
>> Going meta for a bit, I think it's clear that both of us are being
>> informed by our own experiences (or at least the whole thing is hugely
>> coincidental): you understand and appreciate both activities and
>> virtual desktops (not surprisingly, given that you had a hand in
>> implementing them), and you assume other people would be able to make
>> the distinction as well
>
> not at all. i don't care if people can or can not make the distinction: they
> are not the same kind of tool and trying to treat them as otherwise is a clear
> path to failure.
>
> --
> Aaron J. Seigo
> humru othro a kohnu se
> GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
>
> KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
>



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