desktop.el

has there ever been a version of desktop.el that supported virtual desktops? on linux? KDE or Gnome? is the implementation of virtual desktops across window managers even standardized?

What is a "virtual desktop", and what would it mean to "support" them?

Desktops in emacs has mostly to do with (emacs)windows configuration and what buffers you see in a bufferlist. It has very little to do with virtual desktops on the actual OS.

huh? virtual desktops are a standard concept that has been around forever (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual\_desktop). desktop.el remembers the location of open frames. but when recreating them, it limits them to the current desktop, even if they were moved to other virtual desktops originally. ideally desktop.el would store not just the location of the frame but also the virtual desktop it was displayed in.

uh, i've been using emacs since 1979 so i do not understand your comment. desktop.el remembers the open frames & their locations across an emacs restart. currently it only remembers the desktop coordinates of a frame, not which virtual desktop it was on. i asked if it had ever remembered virtual desktop info in the past? and if anyone knew if there was even a standard implementation of virtual desktops. i am old enough to remember purely coordinate-based implementations (absolute vs relative) and window manager re-parenting implementations (each virtual desktop is a window that can be mapped onto the real root window). clearer?

I see; those are "workspaces" to me, so the terminology was unfamiliar. I don't know the answer, but I wouldn't be surprised if Emacs had no knowledge of which workspace you'd assigned it to in your window manager -- that seems like, well, a window management issue (and I have no idea whether there's any standard API for asking the WM this question).

it is confusing. searching for the concept was somewhat of a strange experience. the terms (even after decades) are not standardized.

IIRC, there's an ewmh thingy for workspaces. But it is impractical to support it if your window manager does anything other than the conventional workspaces (think cwm/windowchef groups or larswm/dwm/xmonad/awesomewm tags).