On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:07:40 -0400, Pierre-Luc Auclair <p.lucauclair@...1585...> wrote:
While I'm sure most people here have many documents open at once, I really wish I could show you the type of users who ask "where did my documents go?" when they have more than one window open and the first window is hidden obscured by the second.
No need, I think we all have family members who have asked this exact question. ;-)
I'm sorry but I really think this is a non-argument from an accessibility and usability POV. This is almost assuming the user is too stupid to learn how a specific application works. Anybody can be taught, and anybody who is able to use Inkscape should be able to use it.
Hmm. By that same token, is it right to assume that such users can't be taught to use the standard window management in their environment? If they learn that skill, it transfers to (and from) other applications. One way or the other we are going to be violating the expectations of some inexperienced users, so given a choice I would prefer not to punish those who have begun to learn to use the standard window management facilities.
It's also not clear to me that whatever weird non-standard approach we implemented would be really easier to learn for such a user -- the taskbar is not the most convenient thing in the world, but showing a button per open window is pretty obvious, and (unlike a control in an application window) it cannot be hidden if a window is in the wrong place (e.g. partly offscreen).
For more advanced users, there are already customizable window managers which do things like group related windows into a single tabbed window. They will not be happy either, if we subvert that functionality by our own ersatz window management scheme.
-mental