HIG (Future of KDE Development)

[Andras Mantia]

On Tuesday 15 February 2005 19:49, Christoph Cullmann wrote:
> other question would be more a implementation detail, does we want a
> kmdi in kdelibs 4.x still supporting usability hell tabbed, toplevel
> and childwin mdi modes?

This is unrelated to the main discussion, but important for many 
applications. ;-) I'd say that having different modes are nice, 
especially because of the limitations of the IDEAl mode. I know that 
KMDI has some serious issues and bugs and it certainly must be cleaned 
up for KDE4 and I'm ready to help doing it. The current modes are:
Toplevel: this is nice for many people as they are free to put each 
window/toolview to wherever they move, but it has some problems, like 
not being able to reach the menus without switching to the window that 
contains the menus... If this problem cannot be fixed, the mode should 
be dropped.
Childframe mode: this is the Windows like MDI. I don't care if it's 
dropped.
Tab Page Mode: the "old" style of MDI in KDE. If IDEAl is fixed this 
might be removed. Now it has some features that IDEAl does not have.
IDEAl: the most modern MDI mode. It has some serious issues why Tab Page 
Mode is still preferred, like if you undock a toolview it still appears 
in the toolview frame(s) and clicking on it does not give you only the 
focus to the toolview, but docks it back before giving the focus.

Every mode except of the Toplevel has the problem that you cannot detach 
the main views (in many applications the editor area), which makes it 
less usable with people using multiple monitors or heavily using 
multiple desktops, but it can be annoying for others as well as it 
limits their freedom to arrange the child windows/views according to 
their wishes.

To go back to the main idea: I agree the issue with MDI must be cleared 
up in the HIG. A good solution would be a mode looking like the current 
IDEAl one which can be configured to behave like a top-level mode, if 
the user likes that way by detaching the toolviews and main views. And 
would be nice if all applications having similar features could use a 
standard library.

Andras

-- 
Quanta Plus developer - http://quanta.sourceforge.net
K Desktop Environment - http://www.kde.org
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