Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jun 2016, lee wrote:
>
>> Interesting :) It seems very confusing, though. How do you remember
>> what is where? I have a plain setup with just 6x6 pages and many times
>> have to flip between them to find the particular page I want to go to.
>
> Well, after a long time working with 2 desktops each 2x2 pages, a while
> ago I junked the idea of separate desktops and pages. Now I have only 7
> desktops each of 1 page (well, I have buttons to switch them to 2x1 1x2
> and 2x2 but I'd never used them).
>
> I have the pager almost invariably exposed, and know which desk I am in
> because it is highlighted in the pager in a different colour.
>
> Three of the desks are named Mail Web and Net, the other are ABCD. I
> know in which desk I am also by a label in the bottom right corner, and
> by the background colour of the root window.
>
> Although I have root menu entries and keyboard accelerators to switch
> desktops, I almost invariably do it clicking on the pager,
>
> To know which application is in which desk, I usually rely on habits
> (mail is in Mail, browser is in Web, virtual machines if any are in Net
> etc.) and on the miniicons in the pager,
>
> In the rare case I forgot what is where (e.g. for the xclipboard, or
> because the window is hidden), I use MB2 bound to FvwmWinList, which
> lists all my windows by title, so I can switch there easily,
>
> I do use a lot the "sticky" mode of the window menu, to move a window
> across desktops (I make it sticky so it appears on all, switch to the
> final desktop, and unstick it), however I have also functions in the
> window menu to move the window to a specific desktop and I use them
> sometimes.
>
>
> You can get a flavour of the old and new approaches (and the configs) in
> http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/WWW/Opinions/window.html
My approach to remember where I am is similar: I have habits. Each
special application and each topic gets the same place every time.
At work, where I deal with many different applications and topics,
my habits involve:
- Desktop cluster 1, desk 3, page 4:
--> Thunderbird (Icedove)
- Desktop cluster 1, desk 9, page 1
--> Lotus Notes (32bit app running via chroot)
- Desktop cluster 1, desk 9, page 2, 6 and 10:
--> Some SSH sessions on the Xen server to monitor the
server (free -m -t, top, xentop_wide)
- Desktop cluster 3, desk 12:
- Language tools, usually:
- page 3, 7 and 11 are dict.cc
- page 4, 8 and 12 are dict.leo.org
- page 2, 6 and 10 for the German thesaurus of dict.tu-chemnitz.de
- page 1 and 5 for Google and Bing (for Grammar)
- Desktop cluster 1:
- 12 desks (144 pages) are more application specific and less topic specific
- desk 1 and 2 (24 pages) for doing software tests
- desk 3 (12 pages) for Icedove, clipboards and Mail related stuff
- desk 4 (12 pages) contains SSH sessions to my mail servers of my test
scenario
- desk 5, page 1 contains a copy template for Jira
- desk 6 was used for Bugzilla in the past, was empty for some years and is
used for Confluence now
- desk 7 is for volatile notes
- desk 8 (12 pages) is for Jira issues (is heavily used now)
- Desktop cluster 2:
- is for to do lists, protocols and agendas (to organize my work)
- mostly, desk 9 is for organizing and 3 pages are usually enough there
- desk 10 is for protocolling
- the other 10 desks are most of the time unused and thus are
cushion (buffer) for unexpected events
- Desktop cluster 3:
- is for looking up things and to surf in the web
- desk 12 is for language tools (see above)
- desk 9 with its 12 pages is for weather reports of different providers
(different web sites)
- desk 11 usually is for Wikipedia sessions
- desk 10 is for Google search engine sessions
- all other desks of cluster 3 I use when I heavily have to investigate
and research into something
- Desktop cluster 4:
- is reserved vor system monitoring and for interfaces to other computers
- desk 1 and desk 2 were for my VNC sessions to Linux
computers (and are mostly empty now, because VNC turned
out to be very glitchy / accident-sensitive)
- desk 3 is a remmina session to the Windows machine that contains
XenCenter
- desk 5, page 1 contains the Trintiy version of ksysguard
- desk 5, page 2 contains an xterm window with a running top
- Desktop cluster 5 and 6:
- These are the 24 desks (288 pages) where I spend the most amount
of my working time
- cluster 5, desk 1, 2, 3 and 4 contain the documentation
of the automated test scenario
- cluster 5, desk 5, 6, 7 and 8 give me access to the different
servers of the automated test scenario (usually Firefox windows)
- cluster 9, 10, 11 and 12 are cushion (buffer) for the case that
I need more space
- cluster 6, desk 1, 2, 3 and 4 give me access to the different
servers of the automated test scenario via SSH or remmina
- desk 1 is the place where I run the automated tests
- to the controlling server, I have access via SSH, but one
SSH session uses screen with 13 screen windows
(Ctrl+F1 ... Ctrl+F12 for window 1 ... 12 and Ctrl+HOME
for window 0)
- Screen allows me to let some processes (started via SSH) run
when I cut the connection and power my computer of
- cluster 6, desk 5 is for organizing the automatization stuff
(to do lists, documentation, templates, ...)
- cluster 6, desk 6 is for OpenOffice/LibreOffice sheets
or other stuff
- cluster 6, desk 7 is for TestLink
- cluster 6, desk 8 contains the scripts, which control the automated tests
- cluster 6, desk 9 is for git
- cluster 6, desk 10 is usually empty
- cluster 6, desk 11, page 1 is used for meld (a diff tool to compare
source code)
- cluster 6, desk 12 is used as a second version of desk 8 (I use the space
here when desk 8 is occupied with the scripts of one scenario and I
quickly
need to have a look to the scripts of another scenario)
So, as you see, these are habits. Its like owning a big house with
6 floors (the desktop clusters), 12 rooms per floor and 12 tables per room.
When you own such a house, then you also have habits: One room is a kitchen,
one is the bath, one is the office, one for living, one for sleeping, one
for your 20 employees (and each employee gets his/her own office), and
you have many tables per room (one table for eating, one for working,
one for having a conference and so on).
My pagers (at the bottom left of the screen) are mostly not covered
with stuff, except when I run something full screen.
The first pager shows me the 12 desks of the current desktop cluster.
The second pager displays the current desktop row consisting of
4 desks and displays 48 pages at the same time.
The pagers show me where I am.
When I switch to another cluster, desk or page, I usually use the keybord.
Rarely, I click with the mouse into the second pager to go to another
page, but 99,9% of my time I use the keyboard.
Often, I use <Win>+<Space> to pin a window to be able to move it to
another cluster, desk or page.
When I debug a test session, I can use a desk bookmark. Mostly,
I bookmark cluster 6, desk 1, page 3 to the minus key of the numeric keypad
and cluster 6, desk 8, any page to the plus key of the numeric keypad.
Then, I press minus to step to the next test step and I press plus
to step to the source code that controls the automated test.
I can bookmark the current cluster+desk+page via <Win>+<-> oder
<Win>+<+>. With <Win>+</>, I switch the bookmark off when I don't use
it to be able to use <+> and <-> to produce plus and minus characters
in text or to select and unselect files in Midnight Commanders.
With <Win>+<*>, I activate the bookmarks desk-perfectly:
- I press + to go to desk 8, page 5 (the main script file)
- I press <Win>+<arrow> to go to page 6 (an include file)
- I press - to go to desk 1 (the test)
- I press + to go directly back to the include file (the system
remembers at which page I was the last time)
With <Shift>+<Win>+<*>, I activate the bookmarks page-perfectly:
- I press + to go to desk 8, page 5 (the main script file)
- I press <Win>+<arrow> to go to page 6 (an include file)
- I press - to go to desk 1 (the test)
- I press + to go to the main script file (the system
remembers exactly which page I actually bookmarked)
So, <Shift>+<Win>+<*> enables me to use bookmarks for pages
within one desk, which I need sometimes (but rarely) when
I want to compare for example test case descriptions in
TestLink.
But the main use case is <Win>+<*> without <Shift>, so
I can go to different include files at desk 8 or go
to different locations at desk 1 (to investigate
what the test did at file level for example).
Then there is the background color of the root window:
- Green indicates that I am user in one VirtualBox guest
- Turquoise indicates that I am user in another VirtualBox guest
- Ocher indicates that I am user in the host computer
- Red indicates that I am root anywhere.
So, these are my habits. I remember what is where, because
I remember my habits and because I look at the pagers and
at the background color of my root window. For me, this
is not confusing ;-)
Michael
