Re: modal dialogs etc.

[Nick Lamb <njl98r ecs soton ac uk>]

On Thu, Oct 04, 2001 at 05:36:38PM -0400, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> In current gnumeric if you invoke anything modal, the entire program
> in the background gets "greyed out" until the modal task is completed.
> I can see the logic of that, but is it really desirable?  I don't know
> of any other programs that do this, and to me the flickering between
> disabled and active for the main gnumeric window is a distraction.
> In fact for quite a while I wondered what the heck was going on, as I
> perceived this graphical switching out of the corner of my eye, before
> I twigged to what was happening.

The other programs (except Mozilla) don't disable other windows because
in a properly designed system they should almost always be available.
Gnumeric is different because the internal logic is as I understand it
not capable of the normal Unix asynchronous behaviour.

Yes, it sucks, yes I've explained before that modality is not the Unix
way, I was told it's not getting fixed NOW because although no-one
on the Gnumeric project is afraid of inserting massive overkill like a
complete remotable object system with CORBA to draw graphs, they are
scared like small children of asynchronous interaction with the user,
so most things will remain modal at least until Gnumeric 1.0 is finally
branched from HEAD.

I don't understand it, and I didn't understand it in 1999/2000, I don't
expect you to understand either. However most likely you're in the same
boat as me with no resources available so we have to wait for whatever
those who do have resources dedicated to Gnumeric decide to give us.

Nick.