Re: Emulating MDI

[Robert Pearce <rob bdt-home demon co uk>]

On Fri, 12 Jan 2007, Andrew Sobala <aes gnome org> wrote :
> It's not supported natively in GTK+. Most people think that MDI is one 
> of the worst user interface designs ever, and so its lack of support in 
> GTK+ isn't an issue for most people.
I've never really quite understood what people find so objectionable 
about it. It allows you to have two documents side-by-side without 
wasting space on two sets of menus/toolbars/etc. This is useful, for 
example when reviewing. In my case, though, I've not really got multiple 
documents but (potentially, at the user's option) several "live" 
displays of various aspects of a system, possibly in different forms, 
all of which are quite possibly of interest all at once. MDI seems a 
natural choice for that - indeed most of the commercial products of this 
type use it. Often it's not the top level - in one that I've used the 
MDI parent is but one page of a tab-book within a tab-book.

> That said, if you want to use an MDI-style layout, doing a google 
> search for "GTK MDI" gives http://gtkadi.sourceforge.net as its first 
> hit. Looks actively maintained, too (last SVN commit 2 hours ago).

Interesting - thanks. Though the first screen-shot looks like a 
collection of re-sizeable panes, while the second is clearly a tab-book. 
The latter is totally unsuitable for my purposes. The former may be what 
I resort to, although of the "similar tools" I've used the one taking 
that approach was by far the ugliest and least usable.
--
Rob Pearce                       http://www.bdt-home.demon.co.uk

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