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List: kde-core-devel
Subject: Duplicated efforts and consistency (SDI/MDI in konq, konsole etc. ...)
From: Torsten Rahn <torsten () kde ! org>
Date: 2001-03-12 18:21:42
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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
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