Bug 126724

In the old days, KDE HIG said all applications were SDI. Why do you want MDI in KPDF if most simple KDE applications don't support it?

> In the old days, KDE HIG said all applications were SDI.

I think it does not say this today because it is quite absurd. First things like user-friendly, productivity, etc., then doctrine. 

> Why do you want MDI in KPDF if most simple KDE applications don't support 
> it?

??? Thiago, I've read you as "why making app better if most other apps are not that good".

> Why do you want MDI in KPDF

Productivity! This way I could have one app (kpdf) with several documents and the other (OOWriter) with document I create. With MDI it is much easier to make a compilation, quote, compare different articles, than switching among several kpdf instances.

PS. I use mostly konqueror, kdevelop, kate and those apps have quasi-MDI.

Alt+Tab vs Ctrl+[... I don't see much of a difference for IDEAI mode.

> Alt+Tab vs Ctrl+[... 

With MDI it is __ONE__ "alt+tab", while without it there are __MANY__ "alt+tab"s.
With MDI there are two working spaces:
1) my document
2) the sources (other documents) -- since I could tile the documents

So the switch is like this me/they. With SDI it is me/one-of-them/oh,wait-which-one.

In general I see a huge difference in productivity in MDI vs. SDI or quasi-MDI (and I don't know why classic MDI apps are so rare in KDE).

> I don't see much of a difference for IDEAI mode.

I am sorry, but I don't know what you are talking about (I am talking about kpdf, there is IDEAI in Kdevelop, but I don't see anything like that in kpdf).

KDE HIG says that KDE applications should not have classic MDI mode. You can find tabbed- or IDEAI-mode MDI.

> KDE HIG says that KDE applications should not have classic MDI mode. 

Thank you for pointing that out. I am about to post another report because this section in HIG is example of the bad design ("we forbid to do this & that because we know what the user want" -- sure :-( ).

> You can
> find tabbed- or IDEAI-mode MDI. 

I don't know really what the IDEAI mode means since the only app I know, that uses IDEAI is Kdevelop and I can't see any difference to tabbed view.

No, MDI and tabbed mode is not even comparable -- Konqueror for example to stick with HIG introduced crippled split view (at least something) -- but MDI gives you more freedom to operate on several documents at the same time and to maintain all of them visible (not true for tabbed view).


 

PS. Here is my report on HIG:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127298

KPDF is a KDE 3 application that follows the KDE HIG Guidelines[1]. Those guidelines says that KDE does not use MDI, and so KPDF does.
When the KDE3 KIG will say MDI can be used by normal applications, then we can talk again about adding MDI in KPDF. But KDE 3 HIG are quite closed, so that's pretty difficult (if not impossible) to happen.

[1] http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/basics/windows.html

Pity to hear that, doctrine won, regardless of popularity (and proved usefulness) of Konqueror, Kate, KDeveloper, KSpread (partially), K3b, ok enough. Somehow for all those apps it was possible, but for Kpdf it wasn't.

Pity that nobody taught you to communicate your opinions in a way that motivates me.

All the applications you wrote down are NOT MDI, despite the fact you "see" them as such:
- konqueror: a kpart container, with khtml parts you have a browser, with dirpart's a file manager, with kpdfpart's a "tabbed" pdf viewer, and so on
- kate and kdevelop have projects (while kwrite not)
- kspread has spreadsheets, a really quite different concept than "multi documents" (as all the sheets always belongs to the very same document)
- k3b, projects as well

I'll stop now, as it's a pity seeing the same persistence from you for every thing you want and it's not applied, even with valid reasons. (Is there a reason if also acroread is no more MDI in its latest version?)

> All the applications you wrote down are NOT MDI, 

They are not classic MDI, true, but you can work with multiple "documents" without starting multiple instances of the program. Look at the k3b for example -- I can at the same edit audio data and add files to my dvd. I can edit CV in Kate and at the same time I can edit subtitles file.

I cannot resize the "document" window separately from the main window, I would like to, but even such semi-MDI is very useful. Especially comparing to situation I don't have any MDI at all.

> it's a pity seeing the same persistence from you for every thing you want
> and it's not applied, even with valid reasons.

You see it either it is applied or not, be fair :-), and the reason is simple -- I care if KDE is productive and powerful DM or it is just a list of excuses why it lacks certain features (luckily it is rather productive but with omissions here and there).

> Is there a reason if also acroread is no more MDI in its latest version?

I don't work for Adobe, but I would rather say it is a good idea to copy useful features and ignore bad design.