Resuming by default (was: One instance activity)

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 09.12.2008, at 20:39, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> On 09.12.2008, at 18:55, Eben Eliason wrote:
>> Pablo, for what reasons do you desire to prevent multiple instances
>> from running?
>
> Hope there's a better reason than "it's too easy to create unwanted  
> instances" ... (still waiting for the home view icons to resume by  
> default)


Circling back to the underlying problem ... why can't we indeed make  
the home view activity icon resume the latest journal entry?

* this was the intention of the Journal all along (would make the idea  
of stopping/resuming activities much more obvious)
* it would solve Pablo's problem (this works today, resuming an  
already opened journal entry just switches to that activity)
* no more unwanted Journal entries (one would be reused all-over)
* creating a new Journal entry would be an explicit action (need UI  
for that)

That last item is the only problem I can see - in the activity one  
would need a "start new entry" button, just having this as optional  
menu item in the home view is not enough. The semantics would be just  
like the "keep a copy" button now, but also reset the activity to a  
blank slate.

If the upcoming datastore work focused on versioning as much as legacy  
file support, we would not even need that button (though it might  
still be convenient to have). Older instances would then readily be  
available in the Journal and could be resumed from there.

- Bert -