Re: Name change
- From: Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 20:53:56 +0100
On 2007-04-06, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Cornish Kate <kate24@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I keep forgetting I've changed my name and wondering who Cornish Kate is.
<grin> I thought you said you were only feeling *slightly* pissed ;-)
Rowland.
(wondering why he's writing this with the editing window spread over two
monitors[1], which is making typing really freaky)
[1] Four processors, two monitors, gigabit Ethernet, and nearly 900GB
disc space. Overkill? Nah, just about right - and I've got addicted to
the two monitors.
Do you see lines starting on one screen and ending on the other?
Only if I'm daft enough to move a window so that it straddles both
monitors - which is what I did that once, so `yes'.
I'd hate that.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the two screens were the same height and
size - but I've got a 17" CRT screen that's about 2.5" higher than the
15" LCD to its right, both running at 1024x768. So scales are a bit
different on each (not as much as you'd think, mind - 17" CRT does not
mean 17" viewable screen, while 15" CRT does mean pretty much 15"
viewable screen), and there's a jump down as you move to the righthand
screen.
17" CRT could be less than 16" visible, in my experience. You might be
able to 'shrink' the CRT display to get an even closer size-match.
(That's one of the things CRTs can do which flat-screen displays can't;
the other significant thing is that CRTs can manage a greater brightness
range, although LEDs are getting closer - not that that's necessarily a
good thing).
Multi-header displays are possible in Linux too, of course, if you have
the hardware. 'Xinerama' allows a single 'desktop' to use two or more
diplays at once - or of course each display can be used separately.
That'd
drive me mad (if it wasn't already a bit late for that).
It was very freaky, let's put it like that.
I prefer to have several 'virtual desktops' on one monitor, and flip
between them.
I've never got on well with that way of doing things. I first tried it
on Unix boxes around 1990, and didn't like it then - but since the
machines concerned also had 21" monitors, I didn't really feel the need.
I then tried it on my Macs back in the mid 1990s, and *still* didn't
like it.
Different strokes for different folks.
I've tried the latest "3D" enhancements of the Linux
'graphical desktop' (effectively, a multi-faceted hyper-solid floating in
the monitor "space" and rotating and morphing to present different
dimensions within which the application "windows" appear) but that too was
maddening so I reverted to the old "2D" paradigm.
Probably best. Most of this `3D' stuff is just gratuitous flashiness.
I mean, it's a bloody 2D screen I'm looking at, so why try to pretend
that it's not, eh?
Quite. I can see that "3D" could have some uses for games or visualising
solid objects in the design stage (buildings, stage sets, sculptures and
models, machines, etc) but not for reading text or viewing flat images.
The only actual 3D effect I recall with the current Mac GUI is the
`rotating cube' effect when you switch between logged in users - that's
actually quite nice. The `desktop being switched away from' and the
`desktop being switched to' appear on adjacent faces of the cube, which
rotates. Umm. That sounds a lot clumsier than it is. The rest of it
is resolutely 2D, thankfully.
The 'rotating cube' sounds similar to the effect when changing from one
virtual desktop to another in Linux "3D". 'We' can have 'wobbly'
Dali-esque windows too (fetch a bucket, quick).
I'm just not ready for
a multi-dimensional desktop; I'm still a bit confused by having windows in
my desktop, not to mention moveable and re-sizable and over-lapping
windows ... who started this crazy nomenclature?
Xerox?
Probably.
In the days of Windows 3.x, I preferred Quaterdeck's display with
non-overlapping 'Windows', or the 'filing-cabinet and ring-book' model
that came with my ICL sub-notebook; I think Compaq had something similar.
On a 640x480 9" display with a mind-boggling 16 shades of grey, you don't
want to leave any space unused. And of course, Windows in those days
wasn't quite 'multi-tasking' anyway.
There are window-managers for Linux that still don't have overlapping
windows, although I don't actually use one of them. (There are even some
that aren't really designed for mouse users; one is called 'Ratpoison').
Using more than one computer at a time, now that I can cope with; I was
doing that over sneakernet years ago.
Ah well - overlapping windows were a liberation when I discovered 'em.
I'm not really happy unless I've got a few dozen windows open all at
once forming a huge unmanageable heap of untidiness that would drive me
up the bloody wall if it weren't for the fact that I've got any number
of very very obvious and easy-to-use bolt-on goodies[1] to help me
navigate the mess.
Rowland.
I can cope with three or four windows per desktop, if I can keep them
minimised when not in use; that's why I like multiple virtual desktops - I
can have a multitude of 'things' going on, without getting confused.
[1] I don't like fiddling about. If it ain't straightforward when it
comes to UI `enhancements', I don't want to know.
Yup; clean and simple is the way to go
<http://i11.tinypic.com/2wohk50.png>.
--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
.
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