KDevelop editor interfaces - ups

[Roland Krause]

--- Bernd Gehrmann <bernd at physik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:
> 
> That's actually the most useless ui feature I've seen in the last
> 20 years (short of a gay paperclip dancing around on the screen).
> Why would I ever want to see all my 30 open files at once, with
> 4 pixels of each of them visible?

That actually applies just as well to the "splitter mode" currently
available in HEAD. The practicality of this "MDI" mode decreases w/ the
number of files you have opened at the same time. 

But let's focus the discussion on a more appropriate subject, how can
it be made possible that people who want "split window" mode can have
that and people who prefer "child frame" mode can have that also.

> 
> It's quite simple: information in a window hidden by another window
> is
> useless information. 

That is, in it's generality, a wrong assumption. How can you know what
is useful and what is not? We are getting deep into "subjective" or
even "emotional territory" here.

> WiW MDI maximizes the amount of hidden
> information
> by overlapping and maximizes the space covered by window decorations
> and background. Each time you make a window smaller, the amount of
> background is increased. Each time you make a window larger, you
> cover other windows with it. 

Agreed, window decorations are a problem in "child frame" mode, but
there is in general nothing wrong w/windows covering other windows,
it's a different form of "prioritizing". On the level of the window
manager this is done all the time. 

> To make it even worse, not all relevant
> information is available at the same time. When I compare two files
> side by side, I can at any time only see the line number of one of
> them. Finding out the other requires changing the focus.

One could (or should) implement a more appropriate form of diffing two
files. Diffing files by hand w/o graphical feedback should be a thing
of the past, at least in a modern "IDE". 

Roland


=====
--
Roland Krause
In the garage of life there are mechanics and 
there are drivers. Mechanics wanted!

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