[PATCH 2/4] Make some dialogs modal to MainWindow

[Tomaz Canabrava]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Linus Torvalds <
torvalds at linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 11:35 AM, Lubomir I. Ivanov <neolit123 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > most software that i've used make any preferences dialog modal.
> > one potential user interaction issue here is if the main window is
> > maximized [..]
>
> I've had the opposite problem. The damn modal window isn't a real
> window to some of the newer window managers, and opening the settings
> window then *hides* the data in the main window that I need to set the
> setting! I had that come up just the other week with some program. And
> you can't move it around, it is stuck on top of the data you want to
> see.
>
> So it goes both ways. I personally tend to think that modal preference
> windows are a bigger problem than the problem they purport to "solve",
> and you should use modal windows only for trivial stuff that says
> "ok/cancel". This is particularly true with the Subsurface settings
> tool, where my main reason to ever go into it is to toggle
> Imperial/Metric to see one or the other. If the modal preference
> window then hides a large part of the main window, that is a PROBLEM.
>

A 'Toggle Units' button on the toolbar can simplify this, what you think?


>
> That said, when it comes to our current settings menu, I actually
> would prefer for the "Apply" / "Cancel without saving" / "Save" to go
> away, and becomes just "Cancel"/"Save", and changing any of the unit
> settings would automatically change the current units without any
> extra mouse action - so that you can *see* that the units work, but
> then press "Cancel" to go back to your own normal units.
>
> That's independent of the "modal" issue, though.
>
>              Linus
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