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

Nick Treleaven nick.treleaven at btinternet.com
Sat Dec 8 13:17:14 UTC 2012


On 06/12/2012 09:08, Lex Trotman wrote:
> [...]
>
>>> 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.
>
> or when looking at generated files whilst debugging the program that
> generates them.

Just to explain my workflow a little: I don't switch 'through' tabs to 
get to the one I want, I choose the one I want directly or by Ctrl-tab. 
So I do get hit by unwanted reload decisions, but only when closing 
documents.

For my workflow, it is never multiple times in a row, unless I choose 
not to reload a file and close it instead. I can avoid the multiple 
prompts when I want to just by choosing reload once. I think this is a 
significant point, but I accept that people that page through their 
documents would suffer the multiple reload prompt scenario, and that 
that is annoying.

>>>>>> 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.
>
> Well, I don't really agree with being forced to do something to
> continue use of a file, *I'M* in charge of this program, not the other
> way around </rant> but its not that big a point.

It comes down to whether the user would want the editor to protect them 
from editing a document that they actually want to reload first. Note 
that in this scenario edits can happen from 'Replace All in Session', 
i.e. without even switching to the document that is changed on disk.

>> 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.
>>
>
> But this is a big point, as a matter of principle, Geany should not
> compromise being the best (lightweight) IDE it can be just to be
> similar to some dumbed down version.

Agree, we should optimize for programmers.


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