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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: LONG: File-menu
From:       Martin Konold <konold () alpha ! tat ! physik ! uni-tuebingen ! de>
Date:       1999-11-16 19:51:16
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On Tue, 16 Nov 1999 zander@microweb.nl wrote:

Hi Thomas,

Firstly, I would like to ask all parties involved in this discussion to
ONLY follow up via the de-look@kde.org mailing list.

> If I open a lot of documents, I want to be able to close them all with one 
> command. 
> 
> Imagine I start netscape, this application can have dozens of browser windows.
> I want to quit netscape. That means (to me atleast) that I want to close
> all the browser windows. Selecting quit closes all my netscapes. 
> 
> In your solution I have to click each and everyone of the browser windows I had
> open. Not nice!!

I understand your reasoning very good but I would like to tell you why
your approach is not feasable.

The main reason is that a "Quit" which closes all windows of a single unix
process would be impossible to implement cleanly from the UI perspective.

Imagine: A single executable may have a very large number of
windows/views. Due to the integrated nature of KDE it is impossible from 
the users perspective to foresee what will happen if the user selects
"Quit Application". E.g. a general file viewer which is capable of
handling all kinds of documents including png,jpeg,ps,pdf and dvi. 

Each of these windows will look VERY differently to the users. It will be
impossible for the users to identify the which window/view belongs to
which unix process in the background.

She might ask herself why does "Quit Application" in my browser window
ALSO kill my mail client like Netscape does. The very same can happen with
your approach to the user in the example above (the General KDE Viewer). 

"Why does get my klyx previewer (which resides on my "work desktop") (aka
kdvi) get killed when I decided to get rid of all the little kgif viewer
windows on my "fun desktop"?!

In general the user interacts with windows on a K Desktop. These windows
either represent document views or application views. A user may
open/close views. There may be several views to a single
document/application. 

E.g. there may be two views both showing the same of different parts of
the same kword document. 

There might also be two views (if the developer wants it to be) for a
single application e.g. a CD-Player. It currently makes not too much sense
to have two instances of the cd player invoked at the same time. (Might
change with aRts in the future). This enables to have a view of
the cdplayer on Desktop "Fun/Web" and Games but not on "Real Work" and
"Boss" :-)

Yours,
-- martin

// Martin Konold, Herrenbergerstr. 14, 72070 Tuebingen, Germany  //
KDE:  A stable GUI for a reliable OS.

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