On Wed, Dec 08, 1999 at 10:53:50AM +0700, Oki DZ wrote: <snip> > I use Gnome & Enlightenment and I'm wondering why Gnome doesn't > recognize the virtual desktop and virtual screen; ie: if you have > several Gnome terms on separate v. screens and then you save the > session, > the next time you logged in, the terminals will be piled up on the first > screen. > Is this a bug, or it just means that Gnome and E don't work very well? > (if you > have no virtual desktop, then there'll be no problem.) <snip>
The problem is that the X specification doesn't talk about virtual screens at all so different window managers do it in different ways and some not at all. Hence, GNOME cannot know how the screens are implemented and hence how to session manage them properly > > I think it would be nice if what Gnome does doesn't overlap with what E > (or other window servers) does. A simple example: Gnome has a feature > for setting the screen background, E has too. Gnome has a concept of > session, E has (something not-so close to it) too. Problem is, > the features don't always work together, and the duplications make > the use of X is not quite user-friendly (ie: slightly confusing). > I believe if the developers are willing to talk to each other and > deciding the features that are under their controls and that are not, > would be great. > In general the whole window manager concept has shifted to a more total environment - just compare twm to any of the modern managers. E is a particularly bad example because raster et al has specifically said he wants to implement a file manager etc for E - so it really will be more than a window manager. So E is particulary difficult in this area - perhaps there are specific ways to tell it GNOME should manage the background. I suppose you cannot have the flexibility of lots of components ie window managers and GUI system, without some conflict. The only way to completely cut out conflict is to specify the window manager for the environment as KDE does. So far GNOME has resisted this although sawmill seems very favoured amongst developers. Steve
