A few days ago, I expressed a Wish for an Iconic Desktop, and then described where I think MicroSoft went wrong in their pursuit to eliminate icons from the desktop ... but I didn't fully describe what I would like in an "iconic desktop"! So here is what I would like to see:
The First Principle: Where I puts it, it stays! If I set up an icon in a place where I want it, I want it to stay there. No "quick and easy" sorting mechanisms to accidentally reorder everything. No "hey, the dimensions and pixels changed, we need to fix it!" mentality when the resolution of a monitor is changed, or when a new monitor is added, or when a screen is rotated. No "but you probably don't want that anyways" little popups. I can decide for myself what icons I want on my desktop, where I want to put them, and how, and when. If needed, the icons should be squished, or expanded, or spaced, to fit into the changed window, and if all else fails, there should be a way to scroll to see all the icons as I originally placed them.
The Second Principle: I should be able to "customize" each Icon as I see fit, giving it as long or short a name as I'd like, and even be able to add notes to it. I may even want to be able to change the sizes of individual icons, to give them more prominence than others.
The Third Principle: Every Desktop should have its "own" icons, customized for the tasks I want to use those Desktops for. One of the features I like about KDE is how I can create desktops at will, and then assign windows to a particular desktop, or designate them to be on all desktops. Just as I might sort my browser windows based on projects and activities, I would like to be able to do the same with sets of icons. Having said that, I have to put "own" in quotes, because I'd like to be able to have two desktops with the same set of icons, too.
The Fourth Principle: I would like to have desktops within desktops, and be able to navigate between different sets of icons the way I might navigate directories; to this end, I'll likely want to have a "Home" icon set, and then be able to "drill down" from there to the Desktop I currently would like to have.
The Fifth Principle: Along with having "navigational" sets of icons, I would like to have a region dedicated to the proposition that some icons should be on all Desktops; it may even make sense for every "parent" Desktop to have a region that's common with all its "children".
And a Funny Idea: This is a notion that had popped into my head a few months ago, when thinking about icons for menus. UTF (Universal Text Format) has defined a lot of "pictographic" code points 🤔 for texting and other whimsical things 🤪. It might be fun and practical to use one or several of these code points for icons, instead of, or perhaps in addition to, bitmapped icons! 🎉
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