Re: [Usability]Keeping the Quit menu item

[Jeffrey Baker <jwbaker acm org>]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 04:41:35PM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> It only makes sense that if you close a main window, its dialogs and
> toolboxes will close also, so you don't need Quit for that.
> 
> I don't really buy the memory argument; Linux (or any sane unix) is
> fully capable of swapping out apps you aren't using, at least if you
> put them on another workspace or minimize them so they never get
> redrawn. If an app is swapped out it's not going to be slowing down
> whatever you're currently doing.
> 
> Basically, if you can't explain the Quit menu item without invoking
> the idea of a process, then you can't explain the Quit menu item at
> all, because processes are not in the user model.

You must be living in a cave or something if you can be this
obtuse without laughing.  Yes you can leave Galeon in
memory, and yes it will get swapped out.  But, with time,
Galeon grows and grows and grows and grows and grows.  The
only way to shrink it is if you have Quit.  If you don't
have quit, eventually the whole application will crash (due
to the OOM killer) and THAT is pretty bad for usability.

Here's the bottom line, as far as I am concerned: in Galeon
I have Quit which gets rid of all windows, all popup-ads,
all pop-under ads, all cookies, all HTTP Authorization
strings, and all the other undesirable crap that comes from
browsing the web.  If Galeon doesn't have Quit, it needs
some way to clean up the giant mess it leaves in its wake.
Ditto for any other web browser.

Same thing goes for my editor.  If I have 5000 buffers open
in emacs I can just exit the whole thing and destroy all my
buffers.  This is very reasonable.  Even RMS wouldn't want me
to have to close each buffer individually.  But you are
saying that a Galeon user should be forced to close each
Galeon window individually, regardless of the fact that some
of them open up all by themselves?  Regardless of the fact
that every single online bank out there advises the user to
"Quit" their web browser when they are finished?

-jwb