On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:44 AM, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
Also, Bennett, are there instances where we use normal dialogs and sheets would be more appropriate?
Sheets are appropriate for document-specific modal windows, used mostly for opening and saving documents. (The GUI advance on Mac was to tie these to specific document windows, which allows the user to continue to edit other documents with the same application.) We currently use sheets for those (and it is a bit odd especially now with tabbed documents since the sheet applies only to the current tab, and it's not possible to switch tabs while the sheet is open; once we move to separate windows for separate documents, this will no longer be an issue).
The only additional place I think a sheet might be appropriate is with the Print dialog. However, Mac apps are somewhat inconsistent here (Apple's tend to use sheets, others vary widely). (Would it be easy to use the Mac standard print dialog here? If so, I'd say do that and make it a sheet.)
Otherwise, I can't think of places where we'd want *modal* dialogs. A dialog like Insert > Citation I suppose might be a candidate for a sheet, but I think it's good to be able to reposition the cursor in the document while that dialog is open (so that a sheet would not be appropriate). Same goes for Insert > File, etc.
Currently Tools > Count Words is a modal dialog (and I suppose it is because it doesn't provide a live update), but it seems like too much eye candy to make that a sheet. Same for LyX > Reconfigure.
Bennett
