Paul Rohr wrote:
> At 11:10 PM 8/16/01 -0400, Nils Barth wrote:
>
>> On 2001-08-16-16:33, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>>> But if the user wanted to close the only open document and then
>>> open an existing document, they would have to "Open..." it
>>> from "Untitled1". This would result in two open windows, only
>>> one of which they care about.
>>>
>
> There are a number of ways to do what Rob describes, but doing
> things in this order will probably not work.
>
> One of the early MSDI refinements I got talked into was the
> optimization that File / Open will reuse an existing Untitled
> window if it's empty and has never been saved.
>
> Although you can use your desktop to launch AbiWord on an existing
> document, just launching the app creates an empty untitled
> document. If the first thing you do is open another document
> using the file manager, we originally left that useless untitled
> document hanging around, which pissed people off. (And rightly so.)
>
> So for several years now, we've detected that situation and reused
> the window.
>
>
>>> Not a big deal, but a "Close & Open..." menu option that closes
>>> the current document and prompts for an existing document to
>>> open would solve this elegantly. Since the user may want to
>>> close the last open document and work on a new one, a "Close &
>>> New" option would also be necessary.
>>>
>>> So we need two new, little used menu items. It sounds ridiculous,
>>> but that's the price of a complete and elegant Single
>>> Document Interface.
>>>
>> These are -only- useful if the user wishes to close all open
>> AbiWord documents, -then- open/make new... -in that order-.
>>
>
> Are we all clear that this is the *only* use case being described?
> For anyone who wants to play UI designer here, the key question
> we need to have an instinct about is:
>
> What's the most common thing that most people want to do
> *immediately after* they're done editing *all* the documents they
> currently have open?
>
> 1. Start a new, empty AbiWord document. 2. Open another AbiWord
> document. 3. Do something else.
>
> My belief is that #3 is far more common, so the UI is optimized for
> that case. I recognize that some people may want to do #1 or #2,
> but I continue to believe that's a less common use case.
>
> Remember that if they want to work on more documents, they can
> always open or create them *before* closing the last open one.
Agreed.
If I close a document, I don't want no stinkin' alert asking me to start
a new; I just want to close the existing one!
:)
--
H�kan Waara ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
