Multi-Tasking Style

I have developed a natural style, using one work space screen for each of the jobs I must do. I currently have screens for 1) general, 2) email, 3) managing digital camera pictures, 4) personal diary, 5) a Fusion XP compatibility machine, 6) a paper I’m researching, 7) an XCode program, 8) computer root management tasks. This is quite natural way to do multi-tasking this way. E.g.: I am writing a program in one screen, and in working on it, an idea pops into my mind, on say the paper I am writing. (I think minds work that way — good ideas seem to come out of left field when working on something else, and acting on them is important.) I’d like to do one click to get to the “paper I’m writing” screen. There I would have an editor window with the requisite files already open. A second click to select the window, and 20 keys to record the idea, and I click back current on the programming window. All this is done in literally 20 seconds, with low overhead. This kind of thing happens every minute or two the way I multi task. It’s happened 10 times as I write this. I am used to it — Gnome supports this well.

The reason this is efficient is that each work space is like a different desk, each with its papers layed out ready for work in the last context encountered when the ball goes in that court. The overhead of bringing up the requisite application and finding the right document is drastically reduced. I don’t loose the new idea as I’m getting to the place to process it, and most of the previous ideas I had stay in my short term memory. Changing contexts is light weight and doesn’t require much thought. I want this efficiency for the MAC, hopefully in 10.7.

    Spaces in Snow Leopard

Ignoring the fact that it’s missing a few checkoff kind of features, the major problem with Snow Leopard’s spaces IMHO is that it switches work spaces on it’s own, gratuitously. Specifically when I need to use a different app in the same work space, Spaces often moves me out my current space to a different space / task context. E.g. I’m editing my paper, and need Wikipedia, so I click on Safari. Spaces seems to think “well, since there’s no Safari in this space, I’ll switch him to this other space where it is open”. It’s an intrusion in my thought process, and forces a needless step of remembering what space I was in and relocating myself back there. My wife often hears me exclaim “I hate spaces” at such times.

Although this often happens if that app isn’t already open in the current space, it sometime happens just changing buffers (e.g. Aquaemacs ^x^b 2). I have learned ways to switch apps to minimize this, but it requires different actions for each app. E.g. Finder: right click dock | New Finder Window; Terminal and AquaEmacs: left click dock | apple-n; Safari: … . And this method always adds an extra window even when not required. I shouldn’t have to keep track of which apps are open in each space. My take is some API needs to be restructured! E.g.: It should be easy and required for an app to list the space name when it lists its open windows.

    Other Missing Features:

• per-space string name (e.g. <12 chars) displayed on
  space switching operation from the menu bar, also from expose
  the space name on the desktop itself (e.g. in the lower left)

• per-space color/wallpaper, important for subliminal confirmation
  e.g. the “email” space is red.

I am using HyperSpaces 1.0.5 for these features, but is not very
integrated with Spaces. E.g. It has its own separate menues. S

I was looking for the exact same thing and cam across the ability to keep an application running in every space:
http://www.leopardtricks.com/leopard/keep-an-app-on-all-spaces

It may not satisfy your exact needs but could help. For me I just run a program I use often “textmate” in every space. Then I setup all my other apps in my two side monitors and use spaces to switch between them all. It’s not perfect but maybe it’ll help.

Dave

I’d actually pay for that functionality. I don’t generally make use of spaces because of what’s missing.

Looking forward to the public beta.

Is this technically impossible? I’ve seem many other people inquire about this feature, so it’s not like there isn’t demand.