Some questions raised by 131010

[Raphael Bosshard <whistler fnord ch>]

( Reinout van Schouwen asked me to post it here too. No problem! :) )

Application Or Document Centric Interface?

There is a bug filed in bugzilla (131010, filed by me).

The bug is about a rather simple thing: Should Epiphany display display
the favicons of the webpage or should Epiphany display it's own icon.

This would be a no-brainer if Epiphany were just a webbrowser (Just let
the devs do whatever they want). But Epiphany is the default webbrowser
for GNOME, and so this questions touches another, more fundamental
question; Should GNOME applications be application centric or should
they be document centric.

(If you don't know what if these two terms mean; application centric:
think windows, document centric: think macos. This example is not so
good anymore as it used to be, but it works)

Currenty GNOME is neither. Most GTK applications tend to be application
centric, though.


A little bit outside the scope of this mail is another thing: What type
of interface should GNOME applications use: a multi window interface
like the GIMP or a single window interface, like Inkscape? There seem to
be no recommendations about this toppic.

I reckon that multi window interfaces are more flexible, especially when
working with multiple monitors. While it seems to work on MacOS (raising
all windows of one application when focusing one window, menubar at the
top of the screen... as Ken Harris said: A usability/design discussion
about this would be nice) it feels rather awkward for GNOME.

So long,
Raphael