Meld "irritants"

[V S Rawat <vsrawat gmail com>]

When meld starts,

1. why does it have to ask every time "New Comparison",
2. And why are we forced to click to one of three icons,
3. And why are lower two options "blank comparison" and "Compare" 
inactive at that time, say what if we have to do a "blank comparison" 
and if that active we could directly click on that icon, and if they are 
inactive, why are they displayed at that time itself.

Then, after selecting "file comparison",
1. clicking on "blank comparison" or on "Compare" brings the same 
screen. What is the difference in the two options then?


Overall, why can't Meld give a settings in Options what default view 
among all these starting selections we want to start with,
and then always takes Meld to that screen at the very start, instead of 
forcing us to make all these selections which a new user is not even 
aware what these will do, and even after using Meld for several month, I 
am also still not aware.

Then, in a fresh install also, give a default starting screen among the 
above, and user has option to change these in Options. A fresh user is 
not at all aware of what various questions are to so, so one is to be 
presented a screen on which he/ she can directly start working, instead 
of asking him/ her a series of questions.

--

Meld doesn't have a simple option like 'ignore case'.
It is not a bug or mistake, it is ultimate "lack of consideration" on 
behalf of developers. Seems, You didn't even use Meld yourself in real 
life even once.

such an option has to be presented for Meld to be any basic use,
and such run time options like 'ignore case', "club white spaces", 
"ignore whitespaces", "treat tab as space or 4 spaces" and others should 
not be hidden deep in the Options/ Settings,
these should be presented in the tool bar.

-
After clicking "file comparison" and "blank comparison", tabs for two 
files are presented, but in them
sometimes I can paste memory clipboard contents by using Control V 
keyboard keys, but often this key doesn't work, and I have to right 
click and select Paste, increasing a step, and I am confused when ^V 
will work and when it will not work

--
In "file comparison" and "blank comparison", each tab for each New 
Comparison opens,
There is header space with a x icon to close that,
but that header is always necessarily left blank.
what is the use of it?
Why can't you give some simple default names like 1, 2, 3 or compare1, 
compare2, compare3, so that we know which tab has our which compaision, 
and if there are many comparisons we have made and several tabs have 
opened, we can go to some previous tab seeing this header, instead of 
having all blank headers filling entire tab header width.

-
On selecting Meld-Quit or pressing ^Q,
it again asks to save.
I don't want to save,
I came to it just to compare and I already have everything saved safely 
at right places in files,
Why am I forced to go through this question?
Why doesn't Meld give an Option preference to "Ask to save on Quit" 
(otherwise just close)
or why doesn't meld give a different option as Quit (without saving and 
without getting asked whether to save) and Exit (getting asked to save)

Same "Save" is asked on File - Tab close, which can be handled as above.

When I right click - "Open Externally", nothing happens,
if some Options setting is required like setting an external editor, why 
doesn't this clicking takes me to that setting window so that I can set 
that right there, or why doesn't Meld give a message about why nothing 
is happening.
This "nothing happened" is a bug which confuses new users, and after 
months of use of Meld, even I get confused when I click that for the 
first time.
-
If I have to do an "on the fly comparison" of various text strings, I 
don't want to open file/ folder, I don't have to save anything,
then the two above bars "project tab bar" and "file open" bar are 
useless for me and waste precious screen real state. So these should be 
removed for "blank comparison",
or there could be Option given like "Always show project tab bar" and 
"Always show File Open bar", and hide these bars if we don't tick there.

--
Then, Meld" as a menu option is gross, that should be "Project" or 
something like that. Meld is a software and it is not a standard word 
which all software users are familiar with and it doesn't appear in any 
other software.

--

Meld doesn't remember its previous screen location and window size and 
always opens at same place and same size which we have to manually 
change every time. Why can't it remember.

I am using kdiff3 and meld due to various plus/ minus of them, and I 
have zeroed upon these two after having gone through dozens of file 
comparison software,
so I guess I know what I have written above,
though I am sure you would find then impolite or accusative.

overall, meld user interface is totally non-intuitive and so are various 
options.

Hope you would go through the content of what feedback I give and not 
get purturbed by the tone.

Thanks.
--
Rawat
Indore MP INDIA