Re: [Usability]Keeping the Quit menu item

[Wesley Leggette <wleggette gate net>]

On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 21:10, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 07:57:49PM -0500, Ettore Perazzoli wrote:  
> > Given that there is no common model, it's difficult to make rules like
> > "no quit menu".  They would not work for all the apps.
> 
> Right. Well, I think when the HIG suggests "no quit menu" it's
> probably suggesting that all apps should work in a way that is
> document-centric or at least window-centric.
> 
> Most apps *do* already do that, for the most part, it seems to me. Web
> browsers, office apps, pdf viewers, etc.
> 
> Definitely the UI guidelines on the details like which menu items
> to have make some assumptions about the big picture, that may not be
> spelled out explicitly and should be.
>   
> > > If there's a
> > > reason for Evolution, what makes gnome-terminal or nautilus different?
> > 
> > These can both work in an app-like way, with the exception that you
> > never want Nautilus to quit and hence you don't want a Quit menu item
> > there.  (Actually, Nautilus already works like that.)
> 
> Q: Why don't you want Nautilus to quit?
> 
> A: The desktop background happens to be in the same process 
>    as the file manager windows.

This is true? Maybe it shouldn't be, although that is how every other
operating system works, so it's not really suprizing. It's interesting
to note that in OS X, there is an application metaphor for the Finder,
but you can't quit it. You can only relaunch it. I guess this all makes
sense.

> 
> In GNOME 2.2, I can't even find anywhere in the UI that implies that
> the desktop background and the file manager windows are related.  KDE
> has kdesktop in a separate process from konqueror, so we're talking
> about a random implementation detail here, that demonstrably could be
> different.
>  
> > > I'd like to clarify the application vs. window based issue more, it's
> > > a useful discussion. We should start on a higher level there though, 
> > > not on the Quit menu item. ;-)
> > 
> > I agree 100% -- that's why I brought the issue up.  The discussion felt
> > backwards to me.  ;-)
> 
> Yup, indeed.
> 
> > > One interesting point is that Evolution is kind of different from some
> > > of the other examples (browser, office suite) - it has this concept of
> > > an "Evolution Window" that can be a calendar or todo list or mailbox,
> > > and I can "File->New->Evolution Window" - and there's a way inside the
> > > app of switching between calendar/tasks/mailbox. While one might
> > > expect to have three apps that are integrated but you switch between
> > > and launch them using the normal desktop mechanisms.
> > 
> > What is different about it is that you can't define what Evolution is
> > based on the type of window -- but as I already said, that's not a
> > correct way to define what the application is in the first place.
> 
> Doesn't "File->New->Evolution Window" seem to imply a type of window
> called "Evolution window"?
> 
> I can morph an Evolution window into various things - calendar, tasks,
> mailbox - but they are all still Evolution windows.
> 
> If I run "evolution" a few times, I get a new window each time, which
> is document-style behavior, not application-style behavior.
> 
> My question though is: if I'm using Evolution in a
> multiple-document-window kind of mode (I have a calendar window, a
> mail window, etc.) - are 'calendar' and 'mail' more related than 'word
> processor document A' and 'spreadsheet document B'?  Why do I have a
> way to quit all (calendar, mail, todo list) windows as a group, but
> not all (word processor, spreadsheet) windows as a group?
> 
> Now you have me wondering if I choose Quit in OpenOffice, is it going
> to quit all my OpenOffice windows, or all my Writer windows? ;-)
> 
> Havoc
> 
> 
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-- 
Wesley Leggette <wleggette gate net>