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. 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. For the rest of this i'll just say "containment" instead of plasma-activity, and when i say "activity" i mean the nepomuk/kwin/etc thing. I wish the campkde videos were up so I could just point to that. (which reminds me - I owe someone a screencast!) but they're not, so I'll have to repeat a lot of that discussion here. I want to explain a few things about my current view on activities... One thing that is *very* important to me is that people must be able to understand activities enough to use them. A lot of people really don't get virtual desktops. I don't want to hold back those of us who do, but neither do i want to make a complex beast that scares off all but the geeks. quick review for anyone who's forgotten: I want to be able to associate windows with activities so that they're only shown on those activities (yes, plural, not like virtual desktops where it's all or one). later I want applications to adapt to the current activity (example: filedialog showing special Places for that activity), I want to be able to save/restore the whole activity - both containment(s) and windows - and then someday I want to start automatically associating new windows with activities based on stuff like nepomuk tags on the file that's being opened. Anyways, to help people get it, I think it will be beneficial to tie the activity to N containments, where N is the number of physical screens. Maaaybe we can allow more containments if we can do it nicely (someone with a small screen might want more widgets than he can fit) but let's start with it being 1:1 with the physical space. (Side note- a scrollable containment, like newspaper, solves the more-space issue but breaks the scrollwheel-changes- desktops misfeature.) Having this activity-containment tie gives users an anchor. The activity isn't a completely abstract concept then; it's got a more physical representation. And if users are smart they'll give each activity its own wallpaper; having a pretty picture makes it far easier to tell them apart and remember where you are. Now the part aaron's not going to like . ;) I think that the spatial layout of virtual desktops, and the pretty composite effects showing that layout, really help users grasp the concept better. I think that for most people, it makes sense to start out with the same spatial stuff to help people not feel lost. I'm not talking about something added on here - that'd be confusing, the way the zui and desktopgrid are confusing. I'm talking about a merge. Tying activities to virtual desktops, a strict 1:1 relationship. I'd still want an option to unlink them though - there are plenty of people who have tons of stuff open and need the extra desktops even within one activity. 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. We've avoided it for desktopcontainment with the per-desktop-containment monstrosity. We've avoided it for the taskbar by not showing panels in effects. But how do we avoid it when apps like kmail start adapting their content to the current activity? I mean, maybe by then we'll get some new magic that uses more resources to render the apps separately for each activity, but... Eew. And you still have the problem that if you add a 7th virtual desktop, desktops 4 and 5 (or 3 and 6), which were once adjacent, are now further apart. So while in theory it makes sense to be able to merge vdesktops with activities, in reality it'd end up feeling awkward and hacky. :( I've kinda hit a roadblock there, and haven't thought of a way around it. I am *very* open to suggestions on how to make this easy to use without crippling it. :) 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)? -- This message brought to you by eevil bananas and the number 3. www.chani3.com
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