Workspace Next Sprint Organization

[Alex Fiestas]

On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 09:49:22 AM Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 05:24:56 Alex Fiestas wrote:
> > On Tuesday, May 15, 2012 10:07:08 AM Björn Balazs wrote:
> > > Have you been aware of this vision?
> > 
> > No.
> > 
> > > If no: looking back would it have been helpful for your work if you had
> > > known it (and how)?
> > 
> > No (I don't see how to apply it on Bluedevil / RandR / Kamoso).
> 
> two that are immediately applicable:
> 
> * "organic" and scalable user interfaces
I don't exactly now what those are, can you explain? or better, can you apply 
those concepts to the current BlueDevil implementation?

> * integration with activities
How would you integrate BlueDevil or Kamoso with Activities?

For RandR I could add the posibility of modify the default settings and tied 
them to Activity (pretty much like PowerDevil does right now). Not that 
interesting imho.

> > > Is it too general / just right / too specific?
> > 
> > I think it is focused on the shell while we are working towards a
> > workspace, which includes more things than the shell
> 
> in your opinion, in what ways is it focused on the shell?
> > (working out a definition for workspace would be nice too).
> 
> so we can determine what "is" and what "is not" part of the workspace?
> 
> (just to be clear before i start writing about it, only to find out i'm
> writing about something you weren't talking about ;)
Well my objective would be "So we can create a vision around it".

So, what is the workspace for you?

Considering that applications like Dolphin or Gwenview are part of it as well 
as Solid (hardware integration) I find many parts of that vision vaguely  
applicable or at least not clearly applicable.

Also there are some parts of the vision I don't understand, imho we should 
explain them or use other words.

-scalable interfaces ?
-today's contexts ?
-direct manipulation interfaces
-organic look and feel.

I can understand Steve's or President John F. Kennedy visions without having 
to know specifics about politics, device designing or any particular area.

> > > Is there anything missing or unnecessary in it?
> > 
> > I'm surprised that the word "application" doesn't appear even once, the
> > most
> this is where i pop out of a giant birthday cake and yell "SURPRISE!" ;)
> 
> applications are a means to an end. imho: the various aspects of how to
> interact with applications (launch, switch..) can be viewed as specific use
> cases to define and accomodate, but applications are not the primary focus
> of the workspace in the sense that everything else is secondary to that.
That applies to the current vision I guess.

> > basic thing to do with the shell is switching and launching applications.
> 
> so is setting the network, checking the time, etc.
How many times do you do operations with your applications and how many times 
you do other things?
The only thing I do repeatedly with the shell (now that you say it) is 
checking the time.

> * the workspace components should look distinct from applications so it is
> immediately clear which is "mine" and which is "the system"
> 
> * the workspace should frame applications nicely but not get in their way
> 
> * the workspace should provide centralized, consistent management and
> display of services applications use (downloading, notifications, etc)
Are all these things docummented somewhere? I'd like to read about them 
instead of finding out in different emails because it seems that at the end we 
are agreeing on pretty much the same.

> (p.s. instead of "in an excellent way" i would suggest "in an elegant way";
> "excellent" is an personally subjective value judgement, while "elegance"
> has a definition for what it means to the end product .. prefer objective
> over subjective statements in these exercises as that will make creating
> results based on the resulting goal statements easier to keep consistent.)
Elegant then.

> > My answer is based on my experience using the current shell. A possible
> > objective for the "next thing" would be change that habit and make users
> > spent more time on the shell.
> 
> s/make user spent more time on the shell/make the shell something people
> want to spend more time with/
> 
> the question is, of course, "why?" nothing should be done "just because".
> 
> i do think that the shell should receive more time by the person using the
> computer, and the "why" is that it can do a rather good job as a starting
> point and overview of tasks and information in a way that individual
> applications can't.
I can imagine a future where my workspace acts as a iGoogle 
(www.google.com/ig) or something like that, and I can imagine that being 
sorted by activity etc I saw it in Active and I like it but I don't think that 
should be the vision but instead part of it.

Applications are too important to be excluded from it in many ways, the vision 
should include:
-What the desktop does when an app is executed (for example be quiet and not 
bother)
-Application operations (close, launch, install, etc)
-Application integration.

At the end a user spent most of its time on applications.
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