Subject: Re: definitions -- *DI window management
From: Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Aug 20 2001 - 07:13:43 CDT
--- Paul Rohr <paul@abisource.com> wrote: > At 09:05
PM 8/19/01 +0000, David Chart wrote:
> >I also don't think that the Close command should do
> two importantly
> >different things without warning. There *is* a
> difference between
> >closing the application and closing the document,
> even when there is
> >only one document open.
>
> I think that's where we differ. You have an
> app-centric perspective. I
> totally understand that you and other advocates
> really like having an empty
> app hang around. (By now, that's painfully clear.)
Because we can open a new document in the empty app
using its menus, toolbars, etc.
> I don't. I represent a different population of
> users, who like to close all
> their documents in the same way. The last thing I
> want is for any vestige
> of that application to insist on hanging around
> after I close the last
> document. To quote a prior post -- "die, die, die
> already!" :-)
I also close all my documents the same way. And I
close my applications the same way. But I often close
my documents a different way to how I close my
applications (: All Mac users are used to all (almost
all?) apps hanging around even when no document is
open. All Word users are used to Word hanging around
when no document is open. Word has an X in the top
right of each document and in the top right of the
"empty app". Click the app's X and everything closes.
Click the document's X and the document closes.
> Unlike the Mac UI (single menubar) or MDI (the
> top-level container), in MSDI
> there *is* no GUI construct that represents the
> application per se.
>
> The MSDI look and feel is deliberately
> document-centric, and it thus has no
> "natural" GUI state for representing
> just-an-application-with-no-documents.
Unless you take into account one obscure application
that none of our users will be familiar with at all:
Microsoft Word.
> I don't doubt that:
>
> - you (and others) personally find that state
> useful,
> - the 3 second relaunch penalty we impose feels
> onerous to you, and
> - all of the proposed workarounds feel ugly to
> you.
The relaunch penalty for me is not the time it takes
to
start up but the fiddling around in start menus and
such looking for the app's icon to start it up. We
don't all leave all our app icons out on the desktop
(:
Also, at least for me, closing the only document in a
word processor followed by starting a new one is a
*very* common operation. Something I do all the time
in Word. In Abi, I find myself trying to get into the
habit of starting my new document first before I close
the old one; or even doing a "select all" and "delete"
in the current document so I can reuse it.
> The questions we're debating, ad nauseam, are
>
> - how common and useful that state really is for
> most *other* people,
> - whether to add some representation of it to our
> look & feel, and
> - how to keep that from feeling like an ugly
> bolt-on.
MS Word users are common.
> However, adding this feature for you creates costs
> for the other population
> of users (the die, die camp), and I've yet to see an
> all-around win here.
> If we have to favor one population of users over the
> other, then I'd prefer
> to stick with our current behavior.
All die, die users please raise their hands (-;
> >If it's a deliberate design decision, it strikes
> >me as a bad one.
>
> Yes. It was a deliberate design decision to make
> the user experience more
> document-centric without handcuffing ourselves
> inside a totally pristine SDI
> box. This does de-emphasize the application
> somewhat -- when you're done
> with the last document, you're done.
>
> As to whether that's a bad choice, I'm still not
> convinced.
Abi should be as usable as possible for as many users
as possible.
Andrew Dunbar.
=====
http://linguaphile.sourceforge.net
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