From kde-core-devel  Mon Mar 12 18:21:42 2001
From: Torsten Rahn <torsten () kde ! org>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 18:21:42 +0000
To: kde-core-devel
Subject: Duplicated efforts and consistency (SDI/MDI in konq, konsole etc. ...)
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=98442130227949


As a matter of fact there is an issue that currently makes kde a 
less-consistent desktop as well as a less-rapidly-evolving-desktop than it 
could be. The following apps show it quite well:

- ksirc/kvirc(kirc, etc): Basically there do exist a lot of IRC-clients and 
one of the most obvious reasons for this is that people think different about 
the way MDI/SDI should be implemented.
ksirc which began to exist as an SDI-irc-client now has got an additional 
option (in ksircrc) which gives the chance to make it use tabbed MDI.

-Konqueror: Although we had decided on the KDE-TWO-meeting that MDI 
should be a nono, Konqueror still was allowed to have Emacs-Style-MDI. As 
Opera and  Galeon offer tabbed MDI which prooved to be nice in certain 
situations some konqueror-developers think about implementing tabbed MDI in 
addition to the current SDI/Emacs-Style-MDI-mode.

- Konsole: Since KDE 2.0 Konsole offers tabbed MDI (although the tabs look 
like toolbar-buttons).

- KWrite/Kant: Kwrite was created as an SDI-like editor. Kant extended kwrite 
by offering Konqueror's Emacs-Style-MDI- Mode.

So in SUMMARY it's obvious that we can't force people to use SDI and that 
each Mode (SDI / toplevel MDI / Emacs-Style-MDI / tabbed MDI) has it's 
strengths:

- tabbed MDI: Nice to switch fast between documents of the same app
on small screens. 
- emac-style MDI: nice to compare different documents or do dnd between them.
Or to simply show many documents at once on large screens.

 Therefore sooner or later all of the apps above and in the future a lot of 
apps in addition (like kspread, kword etc.) will offer *all* kinds of MDI for 
sure anyways. 
Unfortunately there is already quite some diversity in the way MDI-apps
look&feel (tabbed mdi in konsole compared to kspread/ksirc e.g.).

Obviously having a widget or at least a consistent mechanism which offers to 
switch between:

- SDI
- toplevel MDI
- tabbed MDI 
- Emacsstyle MDI

iseems to be necessary. It should be possible to switch the MDI-Mode globally 
or per-app.
For KDevelop such a mechanism is already planned for KDevelop 2.0 (using 
F@lks QextMDI afaik).
What is the opinion about having such a widget in KDE 2.x ? I think something
like this is really the way to go to prevent people from developing on 
different projects  only to offer different types of SDI/MDI (duplicated 
efforts..) and to make sure that the implementation as well as the usability 
of tabbed MDI etc. happens in a consistent way.

Greetings,
Tackat