GNOME-Shell seems to want to use the application-based paradigm (that is, group all windows under an application and switch between Applications as the representation of a program on the Desktop).
Pardon my overanalysis; I am trying to get to one point below. But first, there are a couple of inconsistencies where the abstraction of purely window-based grouping for Applications fails: 1. Consistently defining the "open a new window action" [some apps open tabs, some Apps only have one unique window, some open a completely new instance, etc.] 2. Integrating application tasks into the environment (possible solutions: an "application menu" of common tasks ala Shell's intended plan, or global menu bar via OS X/gnome-global-menu) 3. Application-based window management actions (closing all windows, hiding the application, etc). G-Shell (pardon my abbrev.), living in the window-based world, has a central problem with #3. -- Open program instances are linked to applications: ex, closing the last window closes the application (and takes away two advantages, 1) access to common tasks [see #2] and 2) quick access to new windows [from being in memory]). So, closing the last Brasero window means that opening a new one requires re-launching the App, and any quick tasks such as "Burn Image..." or whatever Brasero function may be integrated into G-Shell require the same [or may not even be available, if integrated G-Shell Application commands are only shown while the App is running]. I have an idea for this #3 problem. The solution is to hide the window management behind G-Shell's app management. That is, only G-Shell has full control over when an Application really closes. This is relatively simple to imagine: when the last window of an app is "closed" by the window manager, G-Shell merely hides the last window instead of closing the program instance. It then can mark the Application internally as "hidden" rather than merely minimized. And now, G-Shell can quickly relaunch the application (by checking the "hidden" flag and just restoring the closed main Application window), and can still access any application-related tasks integrated into G-Shell quickly (since the instance is still open in the background). This also requires the strict reservation of the G-Shell command to Close Application (closes all windows, as opposed to "close window"), which could be alternately either Ctrl-Q (G-Shell would intercept this before the program would), or Super-Q, or whatever. In addition, "close window" on the last window would obviously hide the Application rather than actually terminate it. Anyway, that was my thought. Thanks for reading. _______________________________________________ gnome-shell-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
