On 17 Mar 2004 23:51:18 -0500, Eamon Caddigan <eca### [at] uiucedu>
wrote:

>The "bunch of windows in a single window" paradigm is called Multiple
>Document Interface (MDI), and I'll confess that I hate it. 

Me too, but I am not talking about that. I am complaining about the
"bunch of palettes and windows all over the desktop" paradigm of the
GIMP, which is as I see it the biggest issue people have with it (and
are flamed for when complaining :) ). It has nothing to do with MDI.

To use the Word analogy, imagine Word with a separate window per
document (as it is now), each document window having its own menu bar
(as it is now) BUT having every single toolbar floating somewhere on
the screen and operating on the currently focused document, if any --
if none is in focus things get worse. Not only will one have 5-6 more
windows to deal with which neither alt-tab nor taskbar grouping will
cure, but also one would have to aim mouseclicks with even more sniper
precision that is already required for using Windows.

So Office, IE, OE etc. are not good examples of the problem I am
illustrating. The Gimp is. Winamp is also using the same approach but
thankfully, one only has to operate it once every few minutes (maybe
even less if one has a remote control :) ) so it is much less
noticeable. Tt actually would not make much sense to have Winamp take
your whole screen a-la PhotoShop just for playing mp3s.


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

Post a reply to this message