From kde-look Tue Mar 13 08:35:23 2001 From: Rik Hemsley Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 08:35:23 +0000 To: kde-look Subject: Re: Duplicated efforts and consistency (SDI/MDI in konq, konsole etc. ...) X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-look&m=98451023206893 #if Dave Leigh > Some projects, like the GIMP or WordPerfect attempt to use a master window. > One only has to look at the GIMP to see what kind of UI Hell this can > produce... throwing all kinds of shit all over the screen, allowing the user > to obscure menus and dialogs, splitting functionality between invisible menus > only accessible by right-clicking the document and a tantalizing central menu > that the user EXPECTS to use to access this functionality, but which is > actually useful for next to nada. Personally I like the GIMP interface. Having menus available on a mouse click, and related only to the window you're working on, is great. I can access menu items much faster than if I'd had to move the mouse to the top of the window. I know that the menu relates to the document I'm editing. They have made some mistakes too, like making the layers+channels dialog dynamic, so when you switch documents, you don't get another layers+channels dialog, the existing one changes to show the layer information for the 'current' document. _That_ is broken and a good example of why MDI is confusing. Apart from small MDI-style 'features' like that, the GIMP's interface is just perfect IMO. As for the central menu, well, that menu and the attached toolbox are merely a set of tools that can be used globally. They aren't dependent on the 'current' document. That's fine with me. I understood it from day one. People complain about ksirc's interface, well, the reason that ksirc is tricky to understand is because it does some weird confusing stuff like quitting the app when you close the last channel window. The 'control' window shouldn't close when you are finished 'editing documents.' It's a global 'toolbox', like the gimp's. If annoying behaviour such as that was fixed, ksirc would be great, and I think people would stop saying that IRC should have an MDI interface. Rik