Moving QExtMDI to kdelibs

[F@lk Brettschneider]

Neil wrote:
 > Your MDI windows don't look exactly like Windows' MDI, but the basic
 > concept is still the same.  You're centering people's thoughts an 
actions
 > on the application, not the document.  This runs against the 
 > document-centered designs used by KDE up until now.
The document-centered design alone is insufficient! All project-centered 
apps like IDEs usually are need a more complex UI.

 > Not if it goes against KDE standards.
If the standard doesn't fit the needs anymore, it must be changed.
You're right, and as you said document-centered apps should still use 
SDI. But project-oriented apps should use any of the MDI UI modes.

 > So why don't *you* propose a new MDI Policy?  You keep emphasising 
the MDI
 > can work many different ways, which makes me think that QExtMDI would be
 > very, very bad for KDE consistency unless some strict guidelines are
 > written for its use.
Have you read both style guides, the Microsoft one from MSDN and KDE's 
style guide? I have. The MS style guide is quite realistic.
In short:
- They advice to use manly SDI for simple apps,
- and they advice one of the 3 MDI modes (windows-in-window, Tab pages, 
Toplevel) for project-oriented apps.
- And Microsoft judges the use of the windows-in-window UI mode as used 
too often. (It seems to be a side-effect of the use of the MSVC 
application wizard... :)
If those paragraphs of the MSDN weren't license-protected, I simply 
would publish them and insert them in the KDE style guide.

Ciao
F at lk

P.S.: MS Word isn't project-centered but document-centered. That's why 
Microsoft changed its UI mode back to SDI. That makes sense. MSVC-7 
keeps MDI as UI mode although they changed it to TabPage mode due public 
demands. That makes sense too since TabPage mode also is useful for 
project-centered apps. In general, tabbed pages are just a kind of 
organising papers (windows) of the same type on the desktop, just like a 
paperclip. So it also makes sense to use Tab page UI mode of QextMDI for 
document-centered apps with multiple opened views (like konqueror).