Re: [gedit-list] RFE: remove the tab when viewing a single file

[Paolo Maggi <paolo maggi gmail com>]

Hi,

> Hi folks,
> 
> Not sure if this issue has been discussed already,
> so I'll go ahead and bring it up for discussion.

Yes, this has been already discussed several times.

> 
> Gedit is a great editor, but unfortunately from my POV
> suffers from a big usability problem: it _forces_ the
> MDI on the user. 

Well, this is true for a simple reason... gedit _IS_ a MDI editor.

> Not sure if this is HIG compliant, but
> being the default GNOME editor makes it a big issue.
> 
> First, the tab is simply redundant and wastes precious
> vertical space when only one file is opened. At the
> very least we should not have it there in that case.

It is not redundant, if we remove the tab you will have no way for
example to know the mime-type of the file or the complete path.

> 
> Second, I think that the MDI interface is simply wrong
> for casual usage.

Why? People always says "MDI is wrong"... but no one is able to explain
me why.
It is not a dogma... there should be a reason.

>  I understand that gedit tries to be
> more than notepad, and this is great, but it is the
> default editor in GNOME, and it must by _default_ cater
> to the simple case.

Why do you think gedit is not catering with the simple case by default?
You start gedit, you edit your document, press Save and Close gedit...
this is the simplest case I can think to... gedit is working very well
in this case and I don't see why having a "tab" is breaking the
simplicity.

>  Advanced users that want MDI for
> development purposes can easily change the default.
> 
> Please consider getting rid of the tab in the default
> behavior. It would make gedit more generally useful
> outside the highly specialized development environment.

Again... why?

I'm not saying gedit is perfect, gedit _has_ problems. We know some of
them and probably we don't know other ones. 
But, really, being a MDI editor is not one of its problems.

If you want to know which is, in my opinion, the biggest usability
problem we have in the scenario you described, I can say: too long
startup time.

Sorry, if I has been a bit rude in this mail... but it is so early in
the morning :)

I really would like to know "why" you people thinks being a MDI editor
is a so big usability problem. All my "whys" are not rhetoric questions.

Thanks,
Paolo