Subject: Mac-specific UI (was Re: FAQ -- why the MSDI interface? (aka, no pagers please))
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Sat Aug 18 2001 - 18:11:32 CDT
At 11:16 PM 8/16/01 +0200, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
>According to Paul Rohr <paul@abisource.com>:
>>
>> Note that in the Mac UI, the few differences between MDI and MSDI are
much,
>> much subtler. In fact, if I did my job right a few years ago, then our
>> existing XP MSDI policies for window management will map *very* cleanly
into
>> a native Mac look and feel. Hub may need a platform-specific #ifdef in
one
>> spot, but otherwise I think I got very close. We'll see. ;-)
>
>Two visible problems that the framework will allow me to handle, but in a
>subtle way:
>
>1/ the shared menubar. In the current paradigm, each frame has its menubar.
>In the mac paradigm, the whole app has 1 menubar. And the toolbox is not
>very helpful to handle several. I'll have to write the code to share it.
>Mozilla have the same problem.
Erp. You're quite right, Hub. When Jeff coded those portions of the
framework, we knew that the Mac port would need to rearrange the
window-packing portions of the UI to get a single app-wide menubar.
This means that your App vs. Frame classes would need to be set up
differently than the other platforms, but we hoped that our odd class
factoring wouldn't get in the way *too* much. ;-)
>2/ the toolbar. This is more a philosophy than a pardigm problem: the toolbar
>it currently at the top of the frame window. Mac user are used to have one
>below the menu bar. Solution: share it like the menubar.
This question of GUI aesthetics we definitely punted on. The Mac version of
the last XP app Jeff and I worked on *did* put toolbars inside each frame,
but even among our Mac developers that was a very controversial decision.
Jeff may have been thorough enough to get the toolbar state notification
APIs separated from the frame, but if not, rewiring it shouldn't be too bad,
I trust.
>Other than that, it fits almost well.... (I have to move the quit from
>file menu on MacOS X for example).
Cool. That's as much as we could have hoped for.
Paul
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