Re: The path of least blame

[Jesse Hutton <jesse hutton gmail com>]

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 5:54 AM, Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org> wrote:

On Fri, 2011-08-05 at 10:49 +0100, Ross Burton wrote:
> On 5 August 2011 08:45, Julien Olivier <julo42 gmail com> wrote:
> > I'd say that Evolution, Rhythmbox, Banshee, Synaptic, Vinagre and
> > Transmission ar example of single-window apps, while LibreOffice,
> > Epiphany, Firefox, gnome-terminal, Nautilus and Gedit are examples of
> > multi-window apps.
> Just to play devil's advocate, I've been known to have two Evolution
> windows open (one mailer, one calendar) but rarely have more than one
> browser window open.

+1 This 'singleton' distinction is bogus.

Gedit supports tabs, why was it proposed as a multi-window app?

Just because people disagree on which apps fit the single instance model and which are better suited for multiple instances doesn't mean the distinction is bogus. It's clear some apps are meant to run as a single instance and some simply are not. Sorry, they're not all the same!

And the presence of tabs support doesn't automatically make something better for single instance, especially when we're talking about a class of application (terminal), where some implementations don't support tabs.

 

> (the point being that drawing a line is rather tricky
> That said, this is all academic.  Surely everyone who uses terminals
> heavily has a keystroke to bring up a terminal?  (super-t for me)

Agree, 100%.

Why, surely! Sounds like bullet proof logic! Or, here's an idea: Lets look at some *evidence*! The OP cited evidence of a terminal user who apparently doesn't use a key combination. I'm another person! In fact, nobody in my office uses a key combination to launch the terminal. I'm not saying that proves anything, but it's evidence to the contrary of the above theory.

Binding global context key combinations to specific application launchers is just not a great solution, even for people like me who use emacs.

Jesse