From: sieu@cory.Berkeley.EDU ( TECKCHENG SIEU)
Subject: UPDATE:  DESKTOP V1.5
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 09:11:26 GMT

Hi Everyone,

Firstly, thanks for all who have contributed their suggestions to improve
Desktop v1.5 is now due for release.  Although Desktop v1.1 provides 
virtual screens, free form dock and advanced features to support the concepts
of virtual screen and free form dock, there is still room for improvement.  
So, Desktop v1.5 is released as a compilation of new ideas contributed by a
few NeXT users and myself.  

All the functions of Desktop v1.5 are fully enabled for a period of time so
that NeXT users have a chance to see how helpful Desktop can be and where it
stands when compared to product like Virtspace 3.0.

Below are the features of Desktop v1.0, Desktop v1.1 and Desktop v1.5

Features of Desktop v1.0 
========================
-  Desktop provides four virtual screens with one being the active screen 
at any one time.

-  Desktop automatically switches from the current screen to the correct
virtual screen that contains the window that you need.  Alternatively, you
can ask Desktop to move that window to your current screen instead.

-  Desktop offers a number of operations on any window, eg. floating a
window so that the window will always appear in the active screen, raising a
window, sending a window to any of the virtual screens etc.

-  Besides window management, Desktop also manages the application icons
that are created by Workspace when you launch any application.  These
application icons can become misaligned or buried under other windows
sometimes.  With Desktop, you can tidy the icons, hide them, unhide them or
place them in front of other windows etc.
		
-  Desktop offers its free-form dock that can be comprised of application
icons, folder icons and even data file icons.  In fact, the dock can be made
up of just any type of icons that appear in the file browser.  The status of
each Desktop dock icon is reflected by the three little dots just like any
NeXT dock icon (this is applicable to application icons only).  For other
types of Desktop icons, eg.  directory icon, a big dot appears on the lower
left corner instead of the three dots to indicate that Desktop will not keep
track of the status for this icon.  Of course, the user-customizable Desktop
dock can be edited and saved for future Desktop session.
	
-  Desktop offers a new input method like that of a X-window manager.
Desktop has the miniaturization of the four virtual sceens in the Desktop
Window.  However, this does not mean that whenever you need to perform an
operation on a window eg. to move a window from one screen to another, you
have to drag the miniature view of that window in the Desktop Window.  This
can be inconvenient.
		
Instead, just move the mouse to the window (the actual window, not the
miniature view).  Then hold down the "Alternate" key first before moving the
mouse.  The WindowOp/NeXTApp Icon/Desktop Icon submenu will pop up depending
on whether the window is really a normal window, a NeXT app icon or a Desktop
icon.  You can then pick the desired operation from the menu.

-  If the machine workload is heavy, adjust the refresh rate accordingly or
even turn it off.  Click on the Update button at the Desktop window to
manually update the display of the windows.


Features of Desktop v1.1
========================
In addition to the above-mentioned features, Desktop1.1 has the following new
features:

-  Desktop 1.1 consumes little CPU power, yet peforms operations faster than
Desktop 1.0.

- Auto Flip Screen feature for automatically switching to the correct
screen when you drag a window beyond the boundary of the active screen.  This
feature can be conveniently disabled for individual window-dragging sessions
if necessary.
 
-  2 new icon features:
   i) Auto-tidy icons for aligning icons neatly at the bottom of the
screen at all times.
   ii) Group icons for grouping icons by application that owns these
icons.

-   Popup submenu can be disabled if it causes interference by other
programs.

Features of Desktop v1.5
========================
In addition to the above-mentioned features, Desktop v1.5 has the following
new features:

-  DesktopIcons can be autoLaunched like the NeXT dock.

-  Intuitive, practical and nice user-interface:  
	pretty icons and slim palette

   You can now forget about the Desktop Window.  The slick-looking palette is 
   all you need to keep around in the Workspace.  It updates you with vital 
   information and allows you to perform functions simply by clicking the 
   buttons.

-  More preference options.
   i)  AutoLaunching DesktopIcons can be compulsory or optional.
   ii) Miniaturize Desktop Window upon startup
   iii)Miniaturize Paleete upon startup

-  Central password file so that Desktop only needs to be registed once.

-  a few bug fixes so that Desktop is getting more robust.

Well, I am surprised that so many people are interested in Desktop v1.1.
I hope more suggestions will roll in so that I can make Desktop to be
even better.

Lastly, I like to announce that my email address has changed.  128a-2fh@web
will be expired soon.  To get a fully functional Desktop v1.5 demo (in 
uuencoded tar format), please email sieu@cory.berkeley.edu 
			or send mail to :

				Teck-Cheng Sieu
			 	P.O. Box 367
				Berkeley, CA 94701-0367

All current users of Desktop v1.1 are entitled to free upgrade to Desktop v1.5.
Desktop v1.5 is $30 per copy but group discount is available.  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin,comp.sys.next.software