On 2007-September-18 , at 04:50 , MenTaLguY wrote:
On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 21:24 -0300, bulia byak wrote:
What exactly in the current state of "panels" (you mean docked dialogs) is so bad in your opinion?
I need to try with a fresh build, but the last time I tried (recently) there were issues like dialogs coming up as dockable panels sometimes and regular panels others (e.g. between the various methods of invoking fill and stroke),
I can confirm this: clicking on the F & S indicator at the bottom of the window opens an undocked F & S dialog (even when one is already open in the dock).
and also undocked panels not playing nicely between multiple document windows.
I think having one dialog per window is the most natural behavior, particularly now they can dock. Furthermore, I think it is probably the best one overall, provided those dialog follow their parent window (are raised or lowered with the window, are closed when the parent window is closed). Indeed, I have always found the "one dialog for all windows" behavior both unintuitive and not practical. Here are some use cases of Inkscape with multiple windows and F&S dialog to illustrate my point: - multiple Inkscape windows on a large monitor or on two monitors: having one F&S dialog means that one usually has to move it around when switching windows. Indeed it is usually nice to have it not too far from your drawing area... unless you have divergent strabismus of course, but that's probably an isolated use case ;) - multiple Inkscape windows on multiple virtual desktops (probably the most common use case on Linux and possible on OS X). Depending on how good your window manager is, and how much aware it is of multiple desktops, a unique F&S dialog can be a problem. Indeed, on my system at least, it always stays at the same place and so, when it is opened on one desktop, it does not show on the others. - multiple windows on one, regular sized, desktop (the most common on Windows). In this case, Inkscape windows are used sequentially in time and having one or several F&S dialogs does not matter, as long as only one dialog is raised with one Inkscape window. Overall, having one dialog per window is the best choice IMHO. It is both simple, intuitive and functional. The only drawback is a little more clutter on the desktop if one is not careful but hiding dialogs on unfocused windows would solve this elegantly.
A last issue with docked dialogs: multiple windows in one Inkscape instance can't open several Document Properties dialogs. When one is open, the other windows cannot open it, trying to do so gives the focus to the window where the dialog is open. Worst, when the window in which it was open in the first place is closed, the other window still cannot open it, making the UI appear unresponsive.
Other than that, docked dialogs are nice. ;)
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/