Re: [Gretl-devel] window arrangements
On Sat, 28 Nov 2009, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Allin Cottrell schrieb:
> * The main window now has a menu item named "Windows" which
> presents a list of open gretl windows, with icons in some cases to
> provide an easy visual fix on what's open. I'm not sure whether
> this should be a sub-item of the "View" menu, or a top-level menu
> in its own right. For now I've made it the latter. Any thoughts?
Given that "View" is the shortest of all menus and that there
are already nine top-level menus I would tend to favor the View
menu. But to be honest I'm not sure if that's the best
approach...
I'm thinking that if this new feature is to be really useful, it
should be immediately apparent, not one layer down.
However, I take your point about the proliferation of top-level
menu headings. I wonder if we could do some consolidation,
perhaps reducing "Data", "View" and "Sample" to 2 headings.
on many systems you have a list of the open gretl windows
already in some taskbar (don't know about windows 7 that
Patricio mentioned). So having another such list inside gretl
may be redundant in many situations.
A gretl window list is less essential if the desktop has its own
(good) task-listing mechanism, yes. But for people who have lots
of windows open I think we can probably do better. For one thing,
we can drop the leading "gretl: " from the listed window titles so
it's easier to scan the relevant part. And we can origanize
things to some extent, with model-related windows listed under the
model window to which they pertain.
I don't have the perfect solution, so I proposed a partial
reform that would reduce the overall number of windows.
Frankly, I don't like the idea of sticking together windows that
are currently separate. It reduces flexibility and, IMO, destroys
the design coherence of existing windows. I tried a test of
combining the existing main window with the icon view (this was
some months ago), and I didn't like the result at all.
Another possibility in principle might be to have a "gretl
workspace window" that holds all other gretl windows (apart from
dialog windows).
MDI? Sorry, I don't like it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface
-- BTW, that just inspired an idea: I think it would be helpful if
with
some command you could "conjure" all gretl windows to the front at the
same time. Actually, if that were possible, I would tend to think that
it's actually not necessary to reduce the number of windows! So, is it
possible?
Hmm, tessellating the plane with gretl windows? I don't know how
easy that would be.
thanks, especially for your open-mindedness about this issue,
As you see, I'm open-minded only up to a point! But we'll see
what we can do.
Allin.