On Mar 27, 2007, at 11:27 AM, Alan Horkan wrote:
IIRC, one of Jon Cruz' salient points is that window management (and, as
a consequence, document workflow management) is something we ought to
expect the _window manager_ to be solving.
Except unfortunately we have windows users, and to a lesser extent Mac and
Gnome users who aren't going to be tweaking things much eathier so
applicatoins cannot abdicate responsibility much as we might like to.
No, those fall exactly under my main point.
Even in MS Windows there is a window manager. It just happens to be spread out all over their code base, instead of being nicely layered like on X11.
Anyway, the point is still very valid that we need to let the OS keep its own way of doing things. In fact, many of the problem on Windows and Macs come from points where GTK+ does things its own way. One main point is dialogs and the task bar. Many of the end user complaints and confusions we get are from too many of our windows showing up in the taskbar. If only each main document did, things would be nicer for Windows users. Then one would also be able to use the collapse feature where the "documents" from a single app get collapsed to a single button when a few are open.
So if when we are running on MS Windows we try to have the app do things to allow the MS Windows window manager to do things they way they work on that platform, then problems are reduced.
Additionally, if we hook into the standard OS provisions there, then the power users who have add-ons to change behavior will get the modified behavior from our app "for free". So both standard MS Windows users and power MS Windows users win.