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Re: GUI design


From: Michael Goffioul
Subject: Re: GUI design
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:28:53 +0100

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 8:59 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> The Octave IDE will be used by novices.  It is NOT the place for UI
> innovation.  We should use GUI/IDE features that are proven, familiar,
> and easy to work with.  We do not need dockable widgets.  The ability
> to change the relative sizes of the command, workspace, and history
> windows would be useful, but we do not need to be able to rearrange
> their locations within the main window.  Tabbed interfaces will not be
> used

I'm not going to argue forever about this, so I'll just explain my
opinion once...

I'm not desperately pushing for dockable widgets, but from my
experience I would definitely start with a flexible window arrangement
system. This will define the overall framework for the entire IDE. If
you don't get it right from the beginning, or go for the more
straightforward solution of a static window arrangement, it'll be more
difficult to move away from it later on. I think it's worth spending
time on that from the start.

The problem I see with a more static layout is that users will most
likely want to change it. Everybody has his own opinion about how
window should be arranged, what's important, what should be always
visible, what is never used... A generic dockable system[1] provides
the flexibility to make everybody happy, as it's entirely under the
control of the user.

Michael.

[1]: by this, I really mean a system where windows can be docked,
popped out, split horizontally or vertically or merged into tabs.


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