Re: [gedit-list] gedit 2.15.2 released

[Steve Frécinaux <nudrema gmail com>]

Paolo Maggi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>> My point is simple: most people are not programmers, and they do simple
>> things with gedit: view a file, make a small change, etc. As the
>> *official* editor, this is its main function, and its default behavior
>> should cater to this use case. And I hope we can all agree that for
>> the simple cases MDI gets in the way.
> 
> I fail to see why MDI is a problem in these cases. If you open a single
> file to see it or to make small changes, I don't see why the fact gedit
> is a MDI editor creates problems.

Note that people ever asked to add another default text editor beside
gedit (well, I see it more as a text viewer than a text editor) which
would be what evince is to, say, scribus. Leafpad was proposed. The lack
of success of such a request looks quite demonstrative imho.

> Please, don't say me the problem is the "tab" shown also when there is a
> single file opened since I already said in past mails that you can
> remove it writing a simple plugin. 

Such a plugin already exists and is present in the gedit-plugins module,
from CVS (and released at the same time than gedit). Well, it *only*
allow to always hide the tabs but you can take it as a base for what you
want...

> I don't care about that so I'm not going to write it, but if there are
> people that really care to this so-called problem, I'm sure they will
> write the plugin and I promise it will be included in gedit-plugins (if
> jesse and nud agree) or at least distributed on the gedit web site.

I agree to include it, if it works ok.

> Note also that we give distros the freedom to modify the gedit.desktop
> file adding the --new-window flag if they think their users want to open
> every new document in a new window.

Then what's left to do is to open new documents from the UI into a new
window (imho you can just override the menu action using a plugin), and
hide the tabs (which is already doable). It would not be so difficult to
implement if someone ever wanted it...

>> For programming MDI is great, but for that _specialized_ purpose the
>> editor can be opened in a special mode (via a different menu, most
>> likely under Programming). This can also control what plugins are
>> loaded too, to make the simple case load faster, and the specialized
>> one even better.
>> They are very different use cases, they need different treatment.

You can use an IDE if you want, but many people prefer to use a general
purpose editor rather than such a specialized editor for coding. I do,
and I suppose you do too, basically because you're on the list.

About plugins, you can choose which plugins you want to load, so you can
load just nothing if you don't care about advanced features (that's the
default setup, I suppose).

If you want a lighter editor for viewing purpose, you can still look at
leafpad or mousepad.