Re: Any more features?

[Paul Warren <pdw ferret lmh ox ac uk>]

On Fri, 26 Nov 1999, Michael ROGERS wrote:

> >On another point, what are we going to do about window-in-window MDI?  I
> >know that most people on this list hate it, but people do seem to want it
> >- I seem to remember Matthias saying that it was going to implemented in
> >KDE.  Can anyone think of any good ways of handling it? 
> 
> I guess it would require the window manager to check for a hint on all
> non-top-level windows, and if necessary reparent them into frames which were
> children of the original parent window (ie treat a MDI parent window like
> another root window). I don't know if that's possible, but if we want
> consistent behaviour between MDI windows and "real" top-level windows I guess
> the MDI windows have to be managed.
> 
> Personally I think the Windows approach to MDI sucks. 

Me too, but UI preferences have been discussed at great length previously.

As was pointed out then, people are still going to write apps with MDI
interfaces whether we like them or not (see StarOffice, Qt + KDE?).  The
world would be a better place if the window manager could manage the MDI
windows, and give them the consistent look and feel.

Matthias, you said that you were working on an MDI protocol for Qt and
your new WM.  If you have this, then I think it should definitely go in
the spec.  WMs do not have to implement it, but it would be in all our
interests to standardise this stuff.

> A good implementation of groups (with group
> raising/lowering/hiding/closing) and/or multiple desktops would be
> much more useful and flexible. Let's implement that properly instead.

Absolutely.  Can you (or anyone else) think of anything else that the spec
does not cover in this respect.  I think that functional hints will help
in providing intelligent MDI done this way (eg. marking the tool windows
as tool windows), but do we need anything more?

cheers,

Paul