RE: V 2.0 Features - Windows MDI?
I think it would be appropriate to abandon the MDI approach. I have written
Windows programs professionally for 8 years (Visual Basic mostly) and never
used MDI. In fact, for most of my work in the financial industry, the
standard has been dialogs. Most of the software written is for data capture
or query for databases and sometimes calculation. These don't really need
Multiple Documents.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Wampler [mailto:bruce@objectcentral.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 1:11 PM
To: vgui-discuss@other.debian.org
Subject: V 2.0 Features - Windows MDI?
I'm slowly getting started on V 2.0. This note is a request for some
feedback
on a very specific issue of how V works. When V was first written, the
many, if
not most, Windows apps that opened more than one file or views used the MDI
model. This is what V has used for Windows, even going so far as to
"simulate"
the SDI model with a single maximized MDI subwindow.
It seems to me that the model has changed somewhat now to not use MDI but
rather multiple SDI-like windows. I use Microsoft Word as the main example
of this. Word used to be MDI, but is now multi-windowed (I know MS has a
name for this windowing approach, but I can't remember it right now...).
The X version of V always worked this way - multiple windows. From the
perspective of V, there is no difference between the X multi-window approach
and the Windows MDI approach. I'm thinking of abandoning MDI in favor of
the newer multiwindow approach. This would have little or no effect on V
programs,
and would correspond the the current "standard". It would, however, have
significant impact on the V / Windows API code. Since I plan to add split
windows and perhaps tabbed windows, this is not a trivial decision. It will
be far easier to abandon the MDI code, and then add split windows, etc.
But it also means that MDI will really be gone. The fact is that the X
versions
have never really had MDI, and Window's V programs would more closely
behave like their X versions, as well as the new multi-window "standard". I
think the impact on actual V app code would be totally invisible -
except perhaps
for the elimination of any need to distinguish the fake SDI simulation.
What is the feeling on this issue? I think I'd really like to abandon
the MDI
stuff in favor of multiple windows, just like the X version.
--
Bruce E. Wampler, Ph.D.
Author of the V C++ GUI Framework
e-mail: mailto:bruce@objectcentral.com
web: http://www.objectcentral.com
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