[wxPython] MDI is obsolete?

Shikora_Seth · February 14, 2001, 6:27pm

I'm using MDI for the app I'm creating because it has the advantage of
keeping all the child windows that it generates in one window to easily
organize them. I also think the MDI architecture helps the user experience
in that there is always a parent window to go back to. Nothing frustrates me
more when using an app then not knowing where to go next or where to go back
to when something goes wrong.

It disturbs me to hear that the behavior isn't similar on Linux, is there
not a similar paradigm in the Linux port?

Seth.

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Harris Scott R CIV AFRL/SNJM [mailto:Scott.Harris@wpafb.af.mil]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 8:13 AM
To: 'wxpython-users@lists.sourceforge.net'
Subject: RE: [wxPython] MDI is obsolete?

On my Linux machines I find that MDI gives me a main window with tabbed
sub-windows that can't be resized unlike
the windows behavior where I have a parent containing several resizable
children.

I never liked MDI anyhow.

-Scott Harris

-----Original Message-----
From: Udo Floegel [mailto:udo.floegel@snafu.de]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 10:02 AM
To: wxpython-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [wxPython] MDI is obsolete?

Is MDI really an obsolete design style ?
Is it a risk for the future to use it ?
Is there a better alternative (even a frame has already a notebook)?
The MDIdemo works for W9x, is it sufficient for GTK?

Thanks, Udo

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Robin · February 14, 2001, 6:48pm

I'm using MDI for the app I'm creating because it has the advantage of
keeping all the child windows that it generates in one window to easily
organize them. I also think the MDI architecture helps the user experience
in that there is always a parent window to go back to. Nothing frustrates

me

more when using an app then not knowing where to go next or where to go

back

to when something goes wrong.

It disturbs me to hear that the behavior isn't similar on Linux, is there
not a similar paradigm in the Linux port?

No, not nativly. There is no such thing as MDI in any X window manager or
toolkit that I have heard of, it is purely a microsoft thing. I used a C++
XP toolkit once that simulated MDI on X by drawing all the decorations on
the child windows itself, but it never quite looked right when using the
window manager they were trying to emulate, and of course when you switched
WM's then it looked totally wrong.

Microsoft seems to be moving away from MDI too. Office 2000 apps by default
now create a top level frame window for each document instead of doing it in
MDI. (At least in Word, not sure about the others since I don't use them
much.)

Personally I prefer multiple top level windows for most things, but there
are certain kinds of apps where MDI is very nice, IMHO.

···

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin@AllDunn.com Java give you jitters?
http://wxPython.org Relax with wxPython!

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Joshua_Judson_Rosen · February 14, 2001, 8:35pm

Shikora, Seth writes:

I'm using MDI for the app I'm creating because it has the advantage of
keeping all the child windows that it generates in one window to easily
organize them. I also think the MDI architecture helps the user experience
in that there is always a parent window to go back to. Nothing frustrates me
more when using an app then not knowing where to go next or where to go back
to when something goes wrong.

It disturbs me to hear that the behavior isn't similar on Linux,

You can use a window-manager that gives hierarchical listings of running
apps, like SCWM or Sawfish. For example: Right now, I have seven top-level
Mozilla windows open (four on my current `desktop' and three on another one
[maintainer several simultaneous `desktop' areas that can be moved between
is common, in the unix world]) , along with two Emacs windows, three
gnome-terminal windows, and one window for an `hour-tracker.scm' window for
a GTK+ Scheme application that I wrote; my current window-manager is
Sawfish.

If I click on my `desktop', I get a menu of launchable programs and
customisable settings, and there's another submenu marked "Windows". This
window-menu contains one menuitem marked "hour-tracker.scm" and three
submenues, each marked one of "Emacs", "Mozilla", and "Gnome-terminal".
The `Mozilla' submenu contains a list of all of the seven Mozilla windows
(with appropriate titles), the `Emacs' submenu contains a list of emacs
windows..., etc.
All of the menu-items are marked to indicate which desktop the window is
on, too.

In SCWM, I remember having several types of these menus, so that I could
see window categorised in different ways (I a menu that had a submenu for
each desktop, so that I could get a list of all of the windows or
applications displaying on each desktop).

Personally: I do a lot of work with many different applications and many
windows per application simultaneously, and I group things together in
different desktops or groups (maybe I should refer to `desktops' as
`viewports'....) (I didn't mention, before, that many window-manager also
allow you do group arbitrary windows together so that various actions, such
as moving, resizing, shading, minimising, etc.).

All of my windows that are participating in a specific *task* get grouped
together, rather than all of the windows that are of the same instance of
an application. The classical Microsoft MDI really is more of a burden to
me than it is a help. Even when I keep everything in the same viewport,
it's bothersome to deal with an MDI that won't let me see background
windows of another application that I want to see....

So..., in summary, I suppose: if you only had the very few primitive
methods of dealing with windows that Win9x gives you, then dealing without
the MDI could be more painful more often. X11 doesn't need the MDI because
it has better things.

Actually, MS is moving away from the parent-/child-window MDI, and the next
version of Windows will use a hierarchical app-listing, too--the example
that I saw was that, rather than having ten Internet-Explorer buttons on
the taskbar, they have one button that you can click and get a menu full of
references to IE windows. They're probably not going to include any of the
other really useful features in most X window-managers, though..., which is
a shame.

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