On Thu, May 06, 1999 at 12:25:41AM -0700, Paul Rohr wrote:
> At 01:33 AM 5/6/99 -0500, Shaw Terwilliger wrote:
> > For the church secretary user, AbiWord will act like the app
> > probably most familiar to today's users... the web browser.
> > We're lightweight, and automatically leech onto existing processes
> > (in Windows) when launched a second time, so we basically act
> > like Internet Explorer or Netscape. Lots of people are now
> > familiar with this concept of computing and less so with MDI.
I'm not sure I'd agree with this... Using my mother as an example, she's
been using computers for a number of years but she can't do anything fancy.
She has trouble doing formulas in excel and it's pretty much a glorified
calculator to her. She's worked as a secretary for a number of years and a
sales manager for a few more before opening her own business in automotive
repair. She's used to SDI interface, true... but where open opens a file
in the current application (saving/closing if necessary, an already loaded
document) and where close will save/close the currently loaded document and
then leave the word processor in a "new document" state.
> The idea of having close on the last window mean the app's gone too makes=
=20
> sense in that context. For folks who only work with one document at a ti=
me,=20
> this does mean that they'll need to rely more on their desktop environmen=
t=20
> to keep relaunching the app for subsequent documents. Otherwise they'll=
=20
> need to leave multiple documents open to continue having access to the=20
> toolbar / menu to keep opening files. =20
Not really.. EXIT means exit. CLOSE means close. Windows users see "exit"
to terminate the application... Based on people I've talked to and word
processors I've worked with (MDI AND SDI) I'd say Brian's idea is more
intuitive to someone who's new to computers, period.
> As various folks have mentioned, MDI apps don't have this problem, but=20
> taking on the overhead of implementing MDI on all platforms wasn't someth=
ing=20
> any of us was willing to sign up for -- and especially not Shaw, who does=
=20
> most of our GTK work. :-)
It's not necessarily MDI that Brian asked for. It's buffer manipulation
(and the stuff that goes with it). "close" clears the document buffer and
resets the states to a fresh document state "open" replaces the document
buffer and states to the opened document... =20
> Brian's idea of having close sometimes also mean open a new window is=20
> innovative, but not all innovations work well -- especially when it comes=
to=20
> touchy-feely GUI issues. I suspect most folks would find a close =3D=3D>=
open=20
> mapping to be a bit counter-intuitive. =20
It's actually very old. Old DOS style=20
In the end, I'm adaptable and can do work with abiword either way... and if=
I
really had a
problem with the way abiword was working, I'd go make the changes I want.
However, I'm a computer programmer.. and a good one so what's usable by me
isn't always a good measure of what's good for the "church secretary"
--=20
Please cc all mailing list replies to me, also.
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