MDI-Tab-Position patch (fwd)

[Mathias Hasselmann <mathias hasselmann gmx de>]

Hi,

        Risking to make me unpopular raising this topic again and again
I'm forwarding this message also to this list. For my excuse: It's IMHO
just too important to have consistent MDI tab handling in GNOME to risk
that this patch isn't merged into CVS soon. Tabbed MDI environments are 
quite common in GNOME apps so adding a gnome_app_setup_mdi_notebook 
function too late just would lead to duplicate, inconsistent code in 
important applications (including core apps like gnome-terminal, galeon, 
gedit) of the cost of high user annoyance.

        Currently my version of gnome_app_setup_mdi_notebook just handles 
the tab position but I also could imagine to store code handling 
packing attributes and drag-n-drop for tabs there.


Ciao,
Mathias
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 23:43:12 +0000 (GMT)
From: Mathias Hasselmann <mathias hasselmann gmx de>
To: "desktop-devel-list gnome org" <desktop-devel-list gnome org>
Subject: MDI-Tab-Position patch

Hi,

        Bored by seeing galeon2's and gnome-terminal's tabs on top of the
MDI window i decided to create a patch fixing this problem. The resulting
code introduces a GConf key "/desktop/gnome/interface/mdi_tab_position",
updates gnome-ui-properties, introduces gnome_add_setup_mdi_notebook in
libgnomeui/gnome-app-helper.h.

        This work is available as bug 85504 in bugzilla
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85504).
                                                                                                    
Still questionary:
                                                                                                            
- should there really be the "preferred MDI style" entry in
          gnome-ui-properties -- it's easy to remove th
        - is gnome-ui-properties the right capplet, should it get a
          notebook-interface, should the MDI stuff go i
                                                                                                    
Rationale:
                                                                                                            
Guess it's perception thing (as for the buttons in dialogs): When
surfing with galeon I personally use the tabs to download pages in the
packground. When using the terminal I'm putting related background tasks
into other tabs. Background is the keyword in both use cases: The
existence of the tabs is an important convenience feature, keeps the
desktop uncluttered... But the tasks running in them are background tasks,
they are not important for my current workflow, placed at the top with all
the important control elements (location field, back/forward/reload-
button) the tabs are disturbing, gaining far too much perception. So I
like to have them at the bottom. The idea is: I only have one pair of
eyes, one pair of hands so I only can use on tab at the moment. The other
tabs are nice to exists and it's important that they are easy to access,
_but_ they shall not disturb my perception.