Re: gnome-terminal idea

[Tim Moore <tmoore tembel org>]

On Wed, 23 Sep 1998, George wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 23, 1998 at 03:04:45PM -0400, Tim Moore wrote:
> > > in this case .. it's NOT the case ... I for one am using a wm without a
> > > taskbar .. and I don't really like taskbars ... so I would like the
> > > mdi as a notebook ... I bet tehre are a lot of people that don't use
> > > taskbars ... or that find the tabs better then a taskbar ....
> > 
> > So, hypothetically, if your window manager supported the BeOS-inspired
> > docking tabs interface, would you prefer that or the GNOME notebook and
> > why?
> 
> hypothetically yeah .... however ... I might still like a windowmanager
> that doesn't because I like that one better .... for example I might like
> twm and all it's features better and twm doesn't support it

twm has features? :-)

> notebook based MDI takes basically isn't really bloat so why eliminate
> it ....

Because the whole MDI paradigm has some other problems outlined earlier.
(e.g., memory space, application-oriented rather than task oriented
grouping, etc.)

But we do seem to be in agreement that having arbitrary user-defined
groupings would be better than application-specific grouping. Right?

> > Are 10 tabs really more manageable than 12 taskbar buttons? And what if I
> > have 20 browser windows open and no other apps on the desktop (which I
> > sometimes do)? The problem has shifted from a cluttered taskbar to a
> > cluttered row of tabs! 
> 
> no I said 3 tabs and 3 tabs and maybe 5 and 5 tabs ... I can have files
> in one directory in one window with a notebook .... etc ....

Well I was basing the number 10 on what you said about 10 rxvts.

> 
> I can have mail news and irc in one xterm mdi and just switch between them
> ... I can be in the cvs dir in different dirs in a different term ... etc...
> 
> I'm not saying I would neccessairly have ONE window for ALL my apps ...

No but you would have one for each app, right?

If you could have multiple windows in an app, and each window has tabs,
that's better, but I would prefer that the notebooks be totally
application-independent. If all you use is terminals than you *could* put
all of the related stuff in one window, I suppose, but what about
graphical apps?

> however if you've ever used screen you'll know how much that kind of 
> "mdi" style is supperior in terms of "speed" of use to overlaping xterms

If I've ever used screen? Is screen a program?

> it would also be much nicer to use if the xterm supported it natively
> such as with the gnome-mdi (and you'd always have the option to create
> separate windows from different views)

If you do have that option, then that's an improvement. gterm is a
terminal which uses gnome-mdi.

> > source and the C source aren't really related in my mind. I care about
> > what I'm trying to do.
> 
> so keep them in separate windows ... hoever I bet your program has more
> sources ... say 20 files .... wouldn't it be nicer had they been cleanly
> in one window rather then polluting your task bar for switching between
> thewindow with your web page files and teh window with your c sources

And it would be even nicer if I could put the terminal, the debugger and
the text editor into a single window (and assuming that the debugger and
text editor are graphical programs).

> however ... if any of this depends on the WM, then we got a problem with
> gnome being wm independent for full functionality

To the extent that this is considered a GNOME problem.

Let me give another example based on my C source editing scenario. I want
to be able to quickly switch between the source files and the terminal,
but I want the debugger window to always be visible, tiled under the
source and terminal windows. I don't need a tab or taskbar button, since
it will always be visible, and I want it to switch back and forth,
minimize, maximize and move around with the other windows. Something like
this:

+---------------------------------------+
|            My Program           _ O X |
+---------------------------------------+
|   ___________  ___________  _______   |
|  / source1.c \/ source2.c \/ gterm \  |
| |            +----------------------+ |
| | /* source1.c */                   | |
| | ...                               | |
| +-----------------------------------+ |
| +-----------------------------------+ |
| | Debugger window                   | |
| +-----------------------------------+ |
+---------------------------------------+

(Does that get my idea across?)

Wouldn't that be great?! It's another form of window docking, but this
time the windows are docked next to each other instead of on top of each
other.

So is this window management or something GNOME should be handling?

I would argue that its window management. If the window manager handles
this, I think it would be much simpler. It's already close to what window
managers are doing, and I think a natural extension. On the other hand, it
may be able to work as another layer between the WM and the app by having
an app which "swallows" windows. I don't know much about how that works,
though (it's time for me to go buy some Xlib books, I think) so I really
don't know if that's feasable. But if it is, perhaps that's the best
solution because it still allows WM independence. In any case, it doesn't
belong in the gnome libraries, as it shouldn't be implemented seperately
by each app. But by a "notebook manager" if you will. I still think that
multiple-document apps should be implemented by running multiple instances
of single-document apps, even if the UI is the same as a MDI app. 

So what do people think of this?

Tim