Gnome replaces Unity

[Liam Proven]

On 17 October 2017 at 07:15, Ralf Mardorf <silver.bullet at zoho.com> wrote:
>
> That's wrong.
>
> It's just a side panel and you could achieve the same with most, if
> not all panels, let alone that you could replace a DE's own panel by
> xfce4-panel.

Ralf, look at the links I sent.

You clearly have not, because I have tried, with the latest releases
of LXDE, Maté and KDE, and none of them can do it.

The original is Windows 95.

If you move the taskbar to the side of the screen, the panel is
vertical but the _contents_ of the panel still run horizontally and
get no bigger. So if the panel is wide enough, you get a _horizontal_
line of status icons. Window-switcher buttons are low top-to-bottom --
say 24 or 32 pixels -- but wide enough to include readable text.

GNOME 2, Maté, LXDE, Cinnamon and KDE merely make the panel contents
run vertically. That is hard to read _and_ it means there's only space
for 1 column of status icons, so you quickly run out of space on the
panel.

Xfce supports this _as well as_ a vertically-aligned panel. Vertical
alignment is the default, but XFCE calls the horizontal contents in a
vertical panel a "deskbar".

No other desktop I know of supports this except Windows. (Well, BeOS
did and Haiku still does, because they both use the same desktop, the
Tracker: but that is because their panel is vertical by default.)

Windows and the BeOS/Haiku Tracker actually do not support a vertical
panel with vertical contents, and I don't miss that because I don't
see those as being any use for me.

> I'm using a top panel, resp. on top I'm using 2 panels, fbpanel on the
> left and lxpanel on the right. Instead of the top position from left to
> right, I also could place them at the left from top to bottom.

But not with horizontal contents. I've tried. Not with fbpanel for
some years, I admit.

> I'm using the window manager openbox without a desktop environment.
> Among several panels, I've got also xfce4-panel installed, so I could
> use it, but it would gain me nothing.

Try and see if you can reproduce what I showed in the pictures with
any other panel. Please.

> IMO a side panel is wasting more space, however, where ever a panel is
> positioned, at a common modern screen size of 1920x1080 the minimal
> "lost" space shouldn't matter at all.

Not at all. Look at those numbers in the resolution you gave. 1920 is
nearly 2000. 1080 is only slightly over 1000. In other words the
screen is nearly twice as wide as it is tall.

That's a lot more horizontal space than vertical. Nearly twice as much.

I am a writer. I need to see lots of words, not very big words. I do
not want a huge page width as that just means huge text. I want to see
as many lines as possible.

Vertical space is very precious and valuable. Horizontal space is
cheap. I am happy to spend twice as many pixels of horizontal space as
I would be to spend of vertical space, because vertical pixels are
twice as valuable or more.

> Usually I'm using only one screen, but take a look at the screenshot
> [1], it's a dual-head screenshot showing the 1920x1080 LCD I always use
> and my old CRT at 1152x864. That should be enough space for most work,
> if you e.g. select to display some windows always on top. FWIW I want a
> panel only on one screen, but I'm not aware of any issue to position
> panels on two or more screens.

You can't send attachments to the list.


-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053