[haiku-development] App idea: Multilaunch / workspace manager
- From: Johan Aires Rastén <johan@xxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 01:32:20 +0100
I have an idea for an app, which I don't have time to write myself.
Motivation: Workspaces are a good way to organize open windows so that those
related to the same task end up together. This is supposed to reduce desktop
clutter and provide a better work environment for the user. Haiku needs more
tools to make workspaces easier to use and more powerful.
Suggestion: Create an application that allows users to predefine a workspace
session with different apps to launch, their window positions,
documents/folders to open, background image etc. One could for example
create a session for Haiku development with a terminal window for compiling,
2 tiled PE, a tracker with /develop/headers/be/ open and a browser with the
BeBook in the background. After that this session could be started in the
same way you start a single application. Another possibility would be to
implement cloning sessions, if I wanted to have almost the same environment
for different development projects.
User interface: The optimal, that I can think of, but also probably
difficult to implement would be if the user could press a button and all the
running applications were saved together with their positions and open
documents where applicable. After that he/she would be presented with a
minuature workspace showing the saved windows so application could be
removed, changed or added (for example by drag and drop).
A secondary solution might be to start with an empty miniature workspace and
just letting the user add programs and documents/folders through some
interface. Pretty much anything goes as long as it doesn't involve editing
text files :)
Potential problems: AFAIK Haiku doesn't control initial positioning of
windows (Which IMO it should, but I'll rant about that some other day) but
maybe that could be solved using message passing.
Other related posts:
