[Geany-Devel] [RFC] Document Messages and File Notification Behaviour (was: buried down deep somewhere)

[Thomas Martitz]

Am 05.12.2012 05:47, schrieb Lex Trotman:
> On 5 December 2012 13:04, Matthew Brush <mbrush at codebrainz.ca> wrote:
>> On 12-12-04 06:00 AM, Nick Treleaven wrote:
>>> On 03/12/2012 21:48, Matthew Brush wrote:
>>>> On 12-12-03 09:05 AM, Nick Treleaven wrote:
>>>> On 03/12/2012 14:18,
>>>> Colomban Wendling wrote:
>>>>   >> Le 03/12/2012 14:35, Nick Treleaven a écrit :
>>>>   [...]
>>>> One problem I noticed with my document-messages branch is that it treats
>>>> all notifications the same, be it important disk-change events or from
>>>> other parts of the code (or eventually plugins maybe). From trial and
>>>> error, I believe the best approach for this is to have a special
>>>> top-most notification place where important messages can go, and when
>>>> one of those is posted, it's stock-id overrides any of the normal
>>>> notification's stock-id in the tab "close" button. Here's an ASCII
>>>> digram of the widget layout inside the notebook page:
>>>
>>> I'm now having serious doubts about whether this complexity is worth it.
>>> I really have no issues personally with the current modal dialogs. Modal
>>> dialogs are a good fit for important information that needs immediate
>>> consideration, like potential data loss.
>>>
>>> This extra complexity doesn't seem to provide much benefit over the
>>> status quo IMO.
>>>
>> IMO, it has a huge benefit. My #1 pet peeve with Geany is the modal dialogs
>> on file-change. However we do it, I *really* think we need to get rid modal
>> dialogs for file notifications on tab change and it also seems like an ideal
>> opportunity to start using the existing file monitoring code.
>>
> Agree that this is a PITA.  Since there is a solution available, why
> not improve the user experience?
>

I agree, the modal dialog is horrible, especially when you get them 
multiple times in a row (since it pops up for each changed document) 
which is not uncommon after switching branches/tags in a VCS.


>
>>>> Thomas also mentioned on IRC that Gedit makes a document "read-only"
>>>> when it detects disk-changes, which seems like a completely sane and
>>>> safe thing to do, although potentially also annoying. Do we want to do
>>>> this as well, in addition to the stuff being discussed above?
>>>
>>> Might be good, except when the document has modifications already.
> And it also forces the user to respond immediately, whichis what we
> want to avoid.

Wrong. You can still give no immediately response, e.g. by changing to 
another document or just viewing the document. Requiring an action if 
you are actually going to deal with the document in question is OK for me.

FWIW, aligning with Gedit might be more convinient for newcomers that 
come from gedit. This doesn't have to be a reason for us to do anything, 
but might become an interesting point if Mint really replaces Gedit with 
Geany.

Best regards.