on Mon, Mar 11, 2002, csj (csj@mindgate.net) wrote: > On Sat, 9 Mar 2002 23:28:31 -0800 > "Karsten M. Self" <kmself@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > > > In general, I find the MDI paradigm to be frustrating to the extreme, > > and the alternatives provided by GNU/Linux are far superior (IMVAO). > > Then why do you continuously plug galeon? ;-) Winks aside, there's a distinction. MDI is often applied to applications in which there is significant authoring activity. Examples most users would be familiar with would include MS Word, MS Excel, etc. One particular instance I'm familiar with is SAS, which includes an "IDE" type getup -- there's a program editor, a log window (programming, error, debugging output), and a "list" window (reports output). Under Unix, the windows are free-form and may be placed at any place on the desktop. Under MS Legacy MS Windows, they're all stuck in this stupid _box_ you can't get rid of. At the same time, there's a lot of work involving reading or copying out of one window and writing into another. You're also likely dealing primarially with a small number of documents or equivalents. The framing is (IMVAO) not necessary for organization. Galeon is (mostly) a _browsing_ application. While some websites allow for input (and I'm using web-based tools more frequently these days), the principle actions are: - Search for a website. - Open a website. - Open links within a page. - Pursue some other vein of thought. What galeon offers is choice: you can stack a bunch of pages together in a single window (not contained loosely within it in the MDI style, but tabbed within a frame). Or you can arrange them as fully separate windows. And you can switch a given page between the two choices, detaching it from a tabbed view, or adding it to another window's tab(s). While it's possible to focus on a single document when browsing the Web, I find I'm far more likely to be scanning a larger number -- five pages would be a small browsing session, 20-40 typical, and 100 or more pages (5-8 windows of 12-20 tabs) is not unheard of. FWIW, I also like and use 'screen' extensively, a terminal / console multiplexer. It (generally) follows a similar mode of restricting the user to viewing one session at a time, but still can be extremely useful. I find it indespensible. One application I've got is based on a set of shell wrappers to launch xterm with screen, with w3m as a shell, wrapped to default to opening to a bookmarks page (it's a lot easier to use than it is to describe). The result is, approximately, a tabbed, text-mode browser. Damned useful stuff. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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