KDevelop editor interfaces - ups

[Bernd Gehrmann]

On Wed, 2 May 2001, Roland Krause wrote:
> --- 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. 

No, you can have 300 files open without that affecting the
user interface.

> 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.

We did that until you came up with this "tested and functional" crap.

> > It's quite simple: information in a window hidden by another window
> > is
> > useless information. 
> 
> That is, in it's generality, a wrong assumption.

Hmm, it's a tautology...

> 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. 

In user interface studies people have been assigned tasks
they should solve with different user interfaces. It has
always turned out that they were less efficient with overlapping
windows. And this is nothing new, it was known at Xerox PARC
twenty years ago. Even Marlin Eller talks about it in his
book :-)

> > 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". 

I did not say 'diffing', and I didn't mean it. There is a
concept of comparing files beyond textual differences. 
Or, to take an obvious example, try to move a small 
modification in the kwrite sources into kate (where all 
classes have been renamed).

Bernd.


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