Moving QExtMDI to kdelibs

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Wednesday 14 May 2003 00:25, Jason Keirstead wrote:
> On May 13, 2003 07:07 pm, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> > I agree that MDI as in Konsole and Konqueror is useful and improves
> > these applications, but these are fine-tuned implmentations for
> > this specific applications. Something like the "windows-in-windows"
> > approach known from Windows (or as in Qt designer) is a nightmare,
> > because it just adds restrictions and side-effects without any
> > gain.
>
> There is no real difference between "windows and windows" and tabbing
> as done in Konq and Konsole, other than how it appears to the eye.
> The functionality, benefits, and limitations are identical for both.
> So you can't say you agree with one and not the other.

Of course there is a difference. With "windows-in-windows" a view can 
hide another view, can be moved partly out of the parent window etc. 
This isn't possible with tabs. Tabs are just a quick way to switch 
views, this definitely is different from emulating a window manager in 
a window.

> > And you would also get new interesting bugs and support problems
> > (It's much more easy to understand bug reports when you know how
> > the windows a user sees look like).
>
> And any of these bugfixes would benefit some 8+ KDE core
> applications, as opposed to the current situation where a bugfix for
> KDevelop's MDI does nothing for Quanta, nothing for Konqueror,
> nothing for Kate, etc.

Bugs which wouldn't be there, if the app wouldn't use the lib. Of course 
it's good to centralize common code, but by introducing a lib which 
provides modes the app didn't support before and which are only 
relevant to a small fraction of users you degrade stability without 
gain.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>