One of the somewhat odd things about my old fashioned X Window System environment is that when I ‘iconify’ or ‘minimize’ a window, it (mostly) winds up as an actual icon on my root window (what in some environments would be called the desktop), in contrast to the alternate approach where the minimized window is represented in some sort of taskbar. I have strong opinions about where some of these icons should go, and some tools to automatically arrange this for various windows, including the GNU Emacs windows I (now) use for reading email.
↫ Chris Siebenmann
Iconification should be possible in any modern desktop environment, and it’s sad that this paradigm has pretty much entirely vanished. I would love for iconified windows to be treated essentially the same way as files, so you can move them around, drop them inside directories, and even move them from one computer to another (assuming they have the application in question installed).
If I’m working on a project, and I have a bunch of LibreOffice documents, spreadsheets, browser tabs, notes in a text editor, some images open, and so on, I should be able to iconify them all, keep them in the project’s directory, and de-iconify them as if nothing had ever happened. Right now, you have to use files and application states for that, which is cumbersome and annoying.
Sadly, advanced window management is dying. Shame.
“If I’m working on a project, and I have a bunch of LibreOffice documents, spreadsheets, browser tabs, notes in a text editor, some images open, and so on, I should be able to iconify them all, keep them in the project’s directory, and de-iconify them as if nothing had ever happened. Right now, you have to use files and application states for that, which is cumbersome and annoying.”
Workplace Shell certainly had this capability.
You are describing the feature of OS/2’s Workplace Shell in which when you closed a folder, it closed all the apps with objects open in that folder, and when you opened the folder again, it opened all the objects in their respective programs in the position that you left them.
Disclaimers: Don’t remember if you had to do anything to the folder to make it behave this way, and I’m sure I didn’t use this a lot. Also don’t remember if all third party apps behaved this way.