Re: An alternative to MDI

[raster redhat com]

On 10 Apr, Julian Regel shouted:
->  
->  > Please, no title bars across the top of a page, ever try to use this
->  > on a large screen? I hate macs because I have to move the mouse huge
->  > distances to get any menu functionality, especially when I am
->  > reading from one window while working in another.
->  
->  I included the bit about title bars across the top so as to maintain 
->  some consistancy with normal windowed applications. I'm not a huge 
->  fan of the Mac single menu bar but this is different, more of a 
->  description of the screen / title (eg. GIMP Screen) with a button for 
->  cycling through screens and button that drops down a menu for more 
->  complicated actions (go to screen, move application to screen etc). I 
->  suppose that this functionality could be implemented on a context 
->  sensitive menu which would technically render the title bar 
->  irrelevant unless a) you want to maintain consistancy across 
->  applications and screens b) you want to give the user choice.
->  
->  I guess that the screen metaphor could be taken one step further and 
->  (like the Amiga) support different resolutions and colour depths 
->  (does X support this on the fly?). Great for users of lower end 
->  equipment that can't do 24bit colour at a high res but wants to do 
->  graphics, or that high colour is too slow for general text 
->  editing/file management. The Amiga's draggable screens (seeing more 
->  than 1 resolution at the same time) would probably not work with most 
->  video cards, but we could still get some functionality from it.

actually most of what you say is infact a window-manager issue.. one
which I hope to address in Enlightenment after the 0.14 rewrite. I and
considering ways of having virtual desktops AND allow you to drag one
infront/behind the other... :) I COULD do this in X if I pull a few
tricks out of my bag... The way to do "private screens" (which is what
they were on Amigas as opposed to public screens which was workbench and
you could open other public screens setting any one of them as the
default) would be to ONLY allow mappings of window onto that desktop of
all windows in the group of the group leader that has "woned" the
screen. I'm sure I coudl tage "leader" windows with extar flags and
allow butotns to be attached to them that will make the group leader
own that desktop.. instantly forcing all mappings of windows NOT in
that leaders group to be diverted to other hidden desktops. Now
effectively we have that app and and its follower windows owning that
desktop. Just as long as apps are nice and set their group leader
correctly if they open lots of windows (ie like gimp) thsi shoudl work
like a charm! :)

as for changing res/depth ont he fly.. no X cannot do that. But I could
emulate the rest... :)

->  Julian
->  +----------------------------------------------+
->  | Julian Regel: julian@white-tower.demon.co.uk |
->  |     http://www.white-tower.demon.co.uk/      |
->  +----------------------------------------------+
->  
->  

-- 
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