Re: return of the MDI

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2000 at 01:19:28AM +0100, Antonio Campos wrote:
> When I once asked if GTK supported of should support window-in-window
> MDI a la Windows, I received a "No" for response. The only way to make
> my application behave MDI style would be to use gnome libraries and the
> famous notebook style (or modal style ...).

Well the thing to do is to take gnome-mdi and extend it to add window in
window as one of the options.  The apps use a high level interface and the
user can choose the mdi mode that suits him the best.  This is one of the
advantages of a high level library like gnome.  And if you add such a mode
existing gnome-mdi apps won't have to be modified to support it and users
of apps won't need to change the way they work with their apps.

For all it's failings I think gnome-mdi is an excelent framework.  It highly
encorages OO design of the app and a model/view/controller framework.  (in
fact it's really hard to do otherwise in that framework).  I'm one of those
people that think that every app (including gnumeric miguel:) should use it.
The app author can make it default to the MDI mode which he thinks is best
for that app, but the user can still change it.

But obviously there wasn't much interest in the window in window approach or
someone would have implemented something like it.  I thinkt he toplevel model
is basically the same except that the windows are toplevel.  And it's a
matter of just setting up the window manager to do the "minimize all" and
things like that.

George