Better MDI idea...(Was: Re: gnome-terminal idea)

[David Jeske <jeske home chat net>]

On Tue, Sep 22, 1998 at 06:24:22PM -0400, Tim Moore wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Sep 1998, George wrote:
> > one idea for gnome-terminal .... use mdi?
> > 
> > does that sound like a good idea or not
> > 
> > it would definately be nicer to be able to have multiple
> > sessions open in one window (with a tab notebook) or
> > the way it's now
> 
> This brings me to a general question I have:
> 
> Why on earth does anybody like the GNOME-MDI? (Or any MDI, for that
> matter)

I understand, and agree completely. I see Windows-MDI as having sprung
out of the poor early win 2.0/3.1 interface which didn't really
support running multiple applications at the same time. As a result,
the whole MDI style has turned into 'apps which hog screen space'. I
much prefer apps which are not MDI (that means both standard
MacOS/NeXT style UI, and UNIXish Multi-window UI like Netscape). 

> But it seems to me that these advantages can be better conferred by a good
> window manager. I *far* prefer to have multiple maximized top-levels which
> I can either alt-tab between or put on different desktops, or put next to
> each other at half-screen width, depending on my mood.

I agree completely.

A very interesting idea spawned out of a discussion with a friend of
mine (who works at Be Inc) about using the Be-style tabbed windows to
get sort of an 'auto-tabbed-MDI'.

In this mode, the window manager would let you 'dock' windows together
into the same physical space, so that the 'tabs' (i.e. if you have not
seen BeOS, it has window titlebars which are only as wide as the
title) would line up horizontally next to eachother. If you dragged
the window, it would move all of the docked together windows.

As far as I'm concerned this would give all the advantages of
Gnome-MDI without any of the drawbacks.

BeOS-Inspired-MDI Advantages over Gnome-MDI:
  - works for all apps with no changes
  - apps can still be in separate address spaces, increasing stability
  - windows from different apps can be docked together
  - no screen space is wasted on the tabbing interface (i.e. we're
    using the window title-bar space for the tab interface)
  - people who don't like it don't have to use it and can still use all the
    same apps.

-- 
David Jeske (N9LCA) + http://www.chat.net/~jeske/ + jeske@chat.net