Subject: Re: Close and Exit
From: WJCarpenter (bill-abisource@carpenter.ORG)
Date: Fri Aug 24 2001 - 12:07:51 CDT
vs> Why not make it configurable, so that the user of the program can
vs> decide how it behaves when it exits? This would give the program
vs> excellent configurability.
Although this is a good-hearted and common developer sort of answer,
pretty soon the program gets cluttered up with extra dialog boxes,
configuration options, and such. After a while, things that are
really important to some people can be lost in the noise of all the
"developers couldn't quite decide" choices that users can make. (Even
in emacs, the quality of an add-on package is partly judged by how
well the defaults are chosen.)
Given that there seem to be two kinds of minds on this, the challenge
is to efficiently satisfy both without putting an annoyance in front
of the way of thinking that doesn't happen to be the default.
I think this goal would be met if the "File" menu had on it both
"Exit" and "Close" (or "Close document" or even "Close <name of
document here>"). If you're going down the road of the "File" menu, I
think you'll quickly get into the habit of selecting "Exit" or "Close"
as your personal preference, uh, prefers. In the simplest
implementation, the menu doesn't even have to be dynamic: just "Exit"
and "Close". (I may be dense, but I can't actually understand why
there is resistance to this notion. It seems painless all around.)
(There's a separate question of what to do when you click the "X" or
equivalent on the window manager decoration when multiple windows are
open. I've been screwed both ways over the years, so I only take that
route with programs I use a lot.)
-- bill@carpenter.ORG (WJCarpenter) PGP 0x91865119 38 95 1B 69 C9 C6 3D 25 73 46 32 04 69 D6 ED F3----------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to abiword-user-request@abisource.com with the word unsubscribe in the message body.
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