Re: Menu Guidelines

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom infernal-iceberg com>]

zinie cs unibo it (2001-06-27 at 0209.09 +0200):
> In a way or another, the only useful application for the 'Quit Mozilla'
> button that I can think of is when Mozilla hangs on all windows, and
> becomes then identifiable as a *single* entity.  In that case I would
> really want to close it, but then, if it hung, eh...

Sometimes I want to kill all windows of a given type, even if they
still work. If you do not want, it is your choice, but some people may
find it useful, cos Mozilla is not the only app out there.

Uuum, you said Gimp? Here is a real life example: have some NS windows
open (and eating RAM like pigs), start Gimp, do some serious job (the
one that starts eating swap), nuke NS in one step, more RAM for Gimp.
No, buy more RAM or fix NS are not solutions, maybe I do not have the
money, and maybe the task eats RAM even if correctly coded. I just
though I could keep it open, but then discover I can not, so I want it
to go away.

<rant>
But of course, I can also use the advanced approach: killall in a
term. It is just my imagination of the trend is that GUI should be
limited, "cos you can always do it guru style, no?". I comment it cos
everytime I say GUI should allow freedom, I get a reply saying that as
I want to do lots of things, I should not use GUI at all, as if I am
not allowed to use full GUI, or mix of GUI and others cos I do not
want to do the typical things. :]
</rant>

Conclusion, IMHO "Close docname" & "Quit appname" is the way to go.
Most users will get it, if you are so advanced to open multiple apps
of the same kind, you are also advanced to know Quit will nuke only
some of the windows. Yes, I also open multiple instances of same app,
and I can find other reasons that hanging, like different locale,
which is great when you use more than one languaje; or better usage of
SMP systems, cos one renders queued job and the other can be used to
prepare more jobs (or in single CPUs too, if you use priorities). ;]

The rest of Calum comments seem also nice. Even the Close all command
will be nice for apps that are toolbox based (close docs, but stay
arround if I need you, or to tidy this a bit, or change global task).

GSR