[texworks] close / exit

[Stefan Löffler]

Hi,

Am 2010-04-05 22:29, schrieb 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).
>   

Mathematica (at least newer versions on Unix) have such a behavior, and
I simply hate it. With normal shurtcuts (e.g. Alt+F4, or even the close
button in the title bar), it's simply impossible to kill it. Whenever
the last window closes another one appears out of nowhere - and without
being asked for. It's really horrible, counter-intuitive, and
complicated (having to remember new, special shortcuts or using the File
menu).

> 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.
>   

Two examples for these two models: the GIMP has the "workspace"
approach, whereas OpenOffice.org has the "splash screen" approach. Both
are quite feasible, though keeping in mind project support from the wish
list I suppose the "workspace" approach would be more suitable (seeing
that, with projects, one may want to close all open files to continue to
work on another file of the project, i.e. keep the project open but
without any open document window).

A lot of these interface things depend, I believe, on how we implement
project design. So maybe we should start brainstorming (in a new thread)
about a good UI for that. This will then give us some starting points
for other UI questions (this one, tabbing, etc.)

My 2c.

Stefan