I think that making it mandatory would be uncomfortable under some circumstances. What if I want to check something while I'm in a specify model window?

On 04-12-2009, at 00:21, Allin Cottrell wrote: > > I've made some changes today in response to a request that Talha a > few days ago, and I'd like to get people's opinions on whether > this change should stay. > > That is, should gretl dialogs (other than simple "instant > response" dialogs such as errors and warnings) be marked as > "staying on top" of other windows?  [Note: it can't be guaranteed > that this will be respected by all window managers, but there's a > mechanism in GTK to request this.] > > Talha's argument was that this firmly prompts users to respond, > rather than "losing" the dialog under other windows.  I think that > has some validity, but I can also see a case for saying that a > program that pushes its dialogs in the user's face is being too > bossy.  What do people think? > Would this imply certain dialogs being modal? Staying on top implies that the window has focus and won't relinquish it? So I can't switch to another window just to have a peek at something in another window? One of the nice things about Mac OS X is that windows are hardly ever modal and/or stay on top. Mac OS X makes switching between windows of a single application very easy: keyboard shortcut Command+` (for Windows and Linux the equivalent would be  Alt+`). As of Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) Apple made the Help window stay on top but not modal. Annoying in the extreme. You have to move it out of the way if you want to follow some instructions in the help in another window. The complaints about this behaviour are many. Some people found a hidden preference setting to make the Help behave as in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). But Apple disabled that in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) so now we are stuck with a Help window that forces itself into the foreground and has to be closed when you want to do something in another window. I now use the Help as little as possible; it's pretty useless. In Windows many dialogs are modal for no good reason at all. In summary: please no "staying on top" behaviour of windows/dialogs if it doesn't concern errors. It gets in the way; it annoys. It is indeed bossy. Berend _______________________________________________ Gretl-users mailing list Gretl-users(a)lists.wfu.edu http://lists.wfu.edu/mailman/listinfo/gretl-users

I'm inclined to think that "stay on top" might be good for simple dialogs such as "choose a lag order", that don't have Help buttons.  I wouldn't want to do this for, say, the model specification dialog.  That's big enough that the user shouldn't be losing it, and complex enough that the user might want to consult some information elsewhere in the GUI before completing the interaction.