Re: Window manager interaction

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,
> I agree that with MS Windows style menus an application should 
> terminate when its last window is closed and have just committed code 
> that implements that logic.
>
> With regard to creating a new document upon program startup, I think 
> that a document based application should always do so (regardless of 
> the interface style) and have committed code for that too.
This is very wrong.

The Application controller subclasses 
"applicationShouldOpenUntitledFile" with yes or no. If it is no, clearly 
no new document should be opened, if yes, it should. It is up to the 
application to control this.
Not all document based applications can handle a "new" document, not 
always it does make sense. I think of my own application PRICE, which is 
able to modify existing documents but which has no tools to handle a new 
one. I wonder how it didn't break after your patch, btw. Thus I do not 
understand the point of your patch: if that option gets respected, it is 
all what we need.

I think the problem with document based applications should be handled 
differently.

I don't think that porting an application to a different Menu Style can 
be done completely automatically in any case.

For example even if you force opening of a New document, what happens if 
you close the last document? The application should definitely not 
close! This is Wrong! At least, not true under any condition.

Do you guy actually use window? I do, sadly.

Use any Office application. Use Photoshop. How do they work under windows?
They have that horrible MDI - Multi Document Interface. With that 
interface the application can continue to exist without any documents 
open. It doesn't force the opening of a new document and it does NOT 
close after the last document is closed.

Thus I think your last changes and your proposed changes are just wrong, 
because applications do not behave that way.

Other applications like "WordPad" do indeed open with a new document and 
exit after it gets closed, but those application do handle only one 
document at a time!

The OpenStep paradigm is inherently Multi-Document.

On the other hand the behaviours you cite could be useful under certain 
conditions.

I thus have the following thoughts:

- we should find a way to implement some sort of MDI. With the GNUstep 
or Mac-style menu it is easy: we already to perfectly. For windows I 
propose the creation of a floating menu-window, thus the main menu can 
be tracked as a real window and doesn't disappears like now. Or we need 
the full-blown big window which contains everything.
- the usage of MDI with "in-windows" menus should be controlled by a 
plist option: if the application does not need it it can disable it (or 
the other way around). Thus without intervention programs will run with 
in-windows menus, but a better control for porting application can be 
done, if the application controller is fine tuned for the different 
conditions.

Riccardo