Virtual desktop

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Virtual desktops rendered as the faces of a cube.

In this example a Unix-like operating system is using the X windowing system and the Compiz
cube plugin to decorate the KDE desktop environment.

In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the
WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the virtual space of a computer's desktop
environment is expanded beyond the physical limits of the screen's display area through the use
of software. This compensates for a limited desktop area and can also be helpful in reducing
clutter. There are two major approaches to expanding the virtual area of the screen. Switchable
virtual desktops allow the user to make virtual copies of their desktop view-port and switch
between them, with open windows existing on single virtual desktops. Another approach is to
expand the size of a single virtual screen beyond the size of the physical viewing device.
Typically, scrolling/panning a subsection of the virtual desktop into view is used to navigate an
oversized virtual desktop.

Contents
 1 Overview
o 1.1 Switching desktops
o 1.2 Oversized Desktops
 2 Implementation
o 2.1 Amiga
o 2.2 X Window System (Unix and Unix-like)
o 2.3 OS/2
o 2.4 Windows
o 2.5 Mac OS
o 2.6 BeOS
 3 See also
  4 References
 5 External links

Overview
Switching desktops

Switchable desktops were designed and implemented at Xerox PARC as "Rooms" by Austin
Henderson and Stuart Card in 1986[1] based upon work by Patrick Peter Chan in 1984. This work
was covered by a US patent.[2]

Switchable desktops were introduced to a much larger audience by Tom LaStrange in swm (the
Solbourne Window Manager, for the X Window System) in 1989. ("Virtual Desktop" was
originally a trademark of Solbourne Computer.)[3] Rather than simply being placed at an x, y
position on the computer's display, windows of running applications are then placed at x, y
positions on a given virtual desktop “context”. They are then only accessible to the user if that
particular context is enabled. A switching desktop provides a way for the user to switch between
"contexts", or pages of screen space, only one of which can be displayed on the computer's
display at any given time. Several X window managers provide switching desktops.

Oversized Desktops

Other kinds of virtual desktop environments do not offer discrete virtual screens, but instead
make it possible to pan around a desktop that is larger than the available hardware is capable of
displaying. This facility is sometimes referred to as panning, scrolling desktops or viewport. For
example, if a graphics card has a maximum resolution that is higher than the monitor's display
resolution, the virtual desktop manager may allow windows to be placed "off the edge" of the
screen. The user can then scroll to them by moving the mouse pointer to the edge of the display.
The visible part of the larger virtual screen is called a viewport.

Implementation
Virtual desktop managers are available for most graphical user interface operating systems and
offer various features, such as placing different wallpapers for each virtual desktop and use of
hotkeys or other convenient methods to allow the user to switch amongst the different screens.

Amiga

The first platform to implement multiple desktop display as a hardware feature was Amiga 1000,
released in 1985. The Amiga moved on to succeed in the consumer and video production market.
All Amigas supported multiple in-memory screens displayed concurrently via the use of the
graphics co-processor, AKA the "Copper". The Copper was a simple processor who could wait
for a screen position and write to hardware registers. Using the GUI implemented in system
ROM API's, programs could transparently display multiple independent screens, from non-
consecutive memory, without moving the memory. This hardware-based scrolling does not use
blitting, but something more like what is sometimes called hardware panning. The video output
is simply told (once, or many times) where to display (scanline) and from what screen memory
address. A screen can move to any position, or display any portion, by modifying the wait, or
fetch position. Typically a single byte value. The Copperlist did need to be sorted in vertical and
horizontal wait position in order to function. Note: See http://www.faqs.org/faqs/amiga/books/
for a list of reference material.

Each desktop or 'screen' could have its own colour depth (number of available colours) and
resolution, including use of interlacing. The display chipset ('graphics card' on a PC) could
switch between these desktop modes on the fly, and during the drawing of a single screen,
usually with three pixel deep line between each desktop shown on the screen. However, if one
interlaced (flickering) desktop was displayed, all desktops onscreen would be similarly affected.

This also allowed the OS to seamlessly mix "Full Screen" and Windowed "desktop"-style
applications in a single environment.

Some programs, VWorlds (an astronomy simulator) being an example, used the multiple
desktops feature to overlay a set of controls over the main display screen. The controls could
then be dragged up and down in order to show more or less of the main display.

X Window System (Unix and Unix-like)

Dynamic virtual desktops in GNOME Shell. Workspaces are automatically added or deleted as
the existing ones are respectively consumed or freed.

Almost all Unix and Unix-like systems use the X Window System to provide their windowing
environment.

The X Window System is unique in that the decoration, placement, and management of windows
are handled by a separate, replaceable program known as a window manager. This separation
allowed third-party developers to introduce a host of different window manager features,
resulting in the early development of virtual desktop capabilities in X.[when?] Many of today's X
window managers now include virtual desktop capabilities.

Configurations range from as few as two virtual desktops to several hundred. The most popular
desktop environments, GNOME and KDE, use multiple virtual desktops (two or four by default)
called workspaces. Some window managers, like FVWM, offer separate "desks" that allow the
user to organize applications even further. For example, a user may have separate desks labeled
"Work" and "Home", with the same programs running on both desks, but fulfilling different
functions. Some window managers such as dwm support "tagging" where applications can be
configured to always launch on a particular, named desktop, supporting automatic organization
and easy navigation.

OS/2

IBM's personal computer OS/2 operating system included multiple desktops (up to 4 natively) in
the OS/2 Warp 4 release in 1996. This functionality has also been provided by the open source
XWorkplace project, with support for up to 100 virtual desktops. (A somewhat limited
functionality version of XWorkplace is bundled with eComStation as eWorkplace, which
includes this same functionality.)

Windows

Virtual desktop in Windows 10 with Network window opened in selected desktop.

Microsoft Windows does not implement virtual desktops natively in a user-accessible way.
There are objects in the architecture of Windows known as "desktop objects" that are used to
implement separate screens for logon and the secure desktop sequence (Ctrl+Alt+Delete). There is
no native and easy way for users to create their own desktops or populate them with programs.[4]
However, there are many third-party (e. g. VirtuaWin, Dexpot and others) and some partially
supported Microsoft products that implement virtual desktops to varying degrees of
completeness.

Currently, Microsoft offers a utility called Desktops which allows users running Windows XP or
Windows Server 2003 or later operating systems to run applications on up to 4 virtual desktops.
Unlike nearly all other virtual desktop solutions for Windows, this utility actually uses native
"desktop objects," as discussed above. Because of this, it does not offer the ability to move
programs between desktops, or in fact to stop using virtual desktops at all, short of logging off,[5]
and Windows Aero only works on the primary desktop object.

Microsoft had previously provided a Virtual Desktop PowerToy for Windows XP, which
simulates many desktops with the more common method of hiding and showing windows in
groups, each group being a different desktop. However, the functionality provided is less
comprehensive than that of many other virtual desktop solutions (e. g. maintain a window in a
given desktop even when its application bar button flashes, etc.). As with all virtual desktop
utilities that work by hiding and showing windows, application compatibility problems are
common, because application developers do not expect virtual desktops to be in use on the
Windows platform.
Historically, software packaged with some video card drivers provided virtual desktop
functionality, such as in Nvidia's nView product (this product has been discontinued for GeForce
card owners since Vista). Some of these programs provide eye-candy features similar to those
available on Compiz.

Many desktop shell replacements for Windows, including LiteStep, bblean, GeoShell, SharpE,
Emerge Desktop and others, also support virtual desktops via optional modules.

Windows 10 will offer virtual desktops through a system known as "Task View".[6][7]

Mac OS

Beginning with version 10.5 "Leopard" in late 2007, Mac OS X has shipped with native virtual
desktop support, called Spaces, which allows up to 16 virtual desktops. It allows the user to
associate applications with a particular "Space". As of Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion", this functionality
has been moved into Mission Control.

Spaces in Mac OS X "Leopard"

Scrolling desktops were made available to Macintosh users by a 3rd party extension called
Stepping Out created by Wes Boyd (the future founder of Berkeley Systems) in 1986. The code
for this extension was integrated by Apple into a later version of the Mac OS, although the
ability to create virtual desktops larger than the screen was removed. The code was used instead
as an assist for visually impaired users to zoom into portions of the desktop and view them as
larger, more easily discerned images.

BeOS

Be Incorporated's discontinued BeOS includes an implementation of virtual desktops called