[texworks] close / exit

[Jonathan Kew]

On 5 Apr 2010, at 21:07, david allen wrote:

> My request is that if one closes the last file, he gets the same blank screen present when the
> program starts. This way close just means close. What could be simpler or clearer?

This would be possible, but I'm unconvinced (so far) whether it's a good idea. Arguably, if we did this, "close" does NOT just mean "close", it means "close this document AND create a new, empty one". Or another way to interpret the scenario, from a user's viewpoint: there's one window on the screen, and I click its close box, but the window does NOT close, it merely discards its content and title, becoming a blank window. I think that's confusing. Apparently "close" does not close the window! Users might easily misunderstand this behavior, thinking the content of their file has suddenly vanished (and not noticing that the window title has changed).

My impression is that most of the applications where you can close all documents without closing the application itself are those where there is some kind of "workspace" that hosts the document windows, and remains open and on screen even after the last document is closed. From this "workspace", you can then open another document, or create a new blank one, etc.

Another model I've seen is where the application presents some kind of "common starting points" screen when all documents are closed, with friendly graphical buttons to access existing documents, create new ones (perhaps from templates), access help, etc. I could imagine this being quite a workable approach, but we don't have such an interface at the moment.

I'm still happy to listen to input on this issue; I'm not seeing a clear answer yet.

JK