[Boa Constr] MDI Interface?

[Markus M. <me...@me...>]

Hi,

I just tried the current CVS version of Boa, and first of all, thanks to
you for this really nice piece of software. The only thing that I don't
like about it (and this is solely ment to be constructive), is its
Delphi-like interface (Please let me know, if this discussion has
already taken place, or if this interface is a strong part of your
design philosophy, and I will shut up :-)

In my (of course very subjective view), this interface has at least the
following disadvantages over the (now fairly standard) dockable/mdi/tab
interface (as seen in Visual Studio .NET, KDeveloper or some commercial
Python GUIs):

- Showing more than one source file at the same time is difficult or
impossible, because window borders have to be manually resized.
- Accidentially clicking/draging a window border/titlebar has desastrous
results
- It is crucial for a RAD tool to have seamless and simultaneous access
to multiple views of the project, f.e.
explorer/properties/documentation/source/todo list at the same time.
- The dialog editor should be in a separate, size-bounded window (with
scrollbars). Have you ever tried to construct a fullscreen dialog with
Boa? (aka "Where are my properties!?")
- All those borders and title bars eat up space (and look ugly, too).
- For extensibility, it is important to have the opportunity of allowing
add-ins to add floating/docking windows on the fly without having the
user to resize all windows.
- The debug window, although great in its functionality, is a perfect
example, for what's wrong with the GUI: Who says, I want to see only the
Stack trace _or_ the Breakpoints? In this context, the "toggle split
orientation" button looks like a unhappy workaround to overcome a
fundamental limitation.
- On Windows, the taskbar is polluted with a unnecessary large amount of
windows that all belong to the same program. If I switch to some other
window (f.e. the web browser, or my mail client), I have to click at
least 3 taskbar buttons to recover the IDE.
- Although I don't really know the Delphi GUI, I seem to remember that
even this GUI has some options to overcome the above limitations
("always stay on top" etc.), that I am missing in Boa.

Please let me know what you think about it.


Markus