[GTALUG] desktop comfort [was Re: Upgraded to Beaver and Command Line Says 'command not found']

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, May 07, 2018 at 11:25:14AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> I understand that well.  It is muscle memory and it is hard to recall
> to reason about.
> 
> What bugs are you thinking of?
> 
> Things that iritate me are few -- I'm a stoic.
> Currently, it can show emojis but they take two character spaces so
> they screw up programs that try to manage the screen (like Alpine).
> 
> xterm lets the program control things to do with mouse interaction.
> Few programs used some of those features and not all were implemented
> in Gnome Terminal.  I know, because Jove does use them (optionally).

vim, elinks, and a number of other things can use them too.  Usually I
wish they didn't.

> I switched to gnome terminal for font scaling.  I understand xterm can do 
> it now but I haven't cared enough to switch back and figure out the 
> scaling.

KDE's konsole does fonts nicely in my experience.  I don't remember
anymore what gnome terminal was doing, but it broke vim and other things
on serial consoles which was not acceptable.  It was almost as bad as
hyperterm in some cases.  If it wasn't for liking tabs, I would be using
xterm instead.

> I'm a touch typist so no function key is in my vocabulary.
> 
> If a function key thing were useful enough (ctrl-alt-del), and I knew of 
> it, I would learn it.  I'm just ignorant and lazy.

Touch typists can be used to function keys too.  I curse hardware
designers that try to get rid of them (or make them require fn to make
them actually be function keys).

> | - There must be minimize, maximize/restore and close buttons on the
> |   windows.  Double click title bar for maximize/restore is a bonus.
> 
> Those are optional (gnome-tweak-tool).  I only use close and the
> double-click-on-title-bar thing.  So the loss of buttons on the title
> bar is fine with me.

There was no way to do it when gnome 3 initially released.  The developers
had wisely determined we didn't need those buttons anymore.  Just use
some gesture on your touch screen, or drag the window to the top of the
screen instead.

> |   Supporting alt+space shortcuts are appreciated too.
> 
> I don't know what those are.  On KDE (what I'm using this instant, it
> gives me some kind of search bar.  It seems to search for something
> amongst the windows.

Well in windows, and xfce it seems, alt+space pops open the menu that
contains minimize, maximize, move, etc, allowing keyboard access to
those window management things.  alt+space x = maximize.  Very handy to
be able to do from the keyboard.

> Addressed by Stewart's fine message.

But why should I need to tweak to get sane behaviour?

> That exists in Gnome (top right corner).

When gnome 3 was released it had no systemtray feature at all as far as
I remember.

> Out of the box?  Or with configuration?  Extensive configuration?
> 
> Gnome seems to want to minimize configuration options.  To that I say:
> as simple as possible but no simpler.  Many feel they've gone to far.

Default xfce just needs the bottom waste of space launcher bar deleted.
The rest works fine by default.

-- 
Len Sorensen