Re: "Close" on last window causes "exit"

Aaron Lehmann (aaronl@vitelus.com)
Thu, 6 May 1999 05:26:32 +0000 ( )


This is the point of view shared by the Macintosh HI. On a mac, closing
the last window in an application will leave the application open. It can
be switched to from the process menu. The problem is that on most window
managers and on windows and BeOS there is a menubar for an application
anchored to each window. On the mac, there is one central menubar whose
contents reflect the current application. Therefore, on other OS's, after
all of an app's windows have been closed it's difficult to control.

Unfortunately, many people are used to closing all the windows in an
application to close this. (This happens all the time on the mac-a newbie
will hit the close box of a netscape window to quit netscape and etc, and
by the end of the day there are sevral apps that they are unaware of
running and eating all their memory.

On Thu, 6 May 1999, Brian E.W. Wood wrote:

>
> Maybe I'm crazy (actually I definitely am but that's another story) but:
>
> A very common scenario is that I have started AbiWord and opened a stored
> document. I wish to close that document and then open another.
>
> Right now if I close the document the program exits, even if I do not wish it
> to do so. The only time "close" does not equal "exit" is if I have multiple
> document windows open (uncommon for me at least). It would seem to be a very
> common situation to want to close an existing document and then start working
> on another.
>
> I think "close" on the last document should remove that document from the
> screen, asking to save changes if there are any, and leave me in the same "new"
> situation that I was in when I started the program. Nothing (IMHO) should cause
> the program to exit except an explicit order to do so.
>
> Just my $0.02 but am I alone here?
>
> Otherwise, *GREAT* work guys. AbiWord is really coming along. Looking forward
> to seeing and talking to you folks at the RedHat Expo in Raleigh, oops I mean
> Linux Expo :-)
>
> ---
> Brian E.W. Wood beww@intac.com
>



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