GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 111509
Add some sort of dock widget
Last modified: 2014-03-24 02:52:49 UTC
Dialogues should be dockable on the side of windows, not just the top and bottom. This would allow components to dock in a manner that is more suitable on low-resolution screens. If the image windows were dockable also, it would (mostly) shut up everyone who whinges for an MDI interface (If you think about it, this basicaly IS MDI, just without the crapness.) since this would be "single-window GIMP". Also a way to change where each docking "area" (like the tools or layers/channels/paths) is placed in the window would allow easier management of window components. Maybe by right or control-clicking the re-size bar between areas.
Being able to dock stuff on the sides would create a whole new set of problems that are not present when dialogs can only be stacked vertically. The layout management would be more complex because it would require all dialogs to be put in a grid (or something more complex) and I expect that some people would soon ask for the ability to move and resize all dialogs within each dock, so we would quickly reach the same complexity as the WiW MDI interface described in bug #7379. Besides, this would not eliminate the need for a "good" MDI interface because this interface model is more than simply putting all windows inside a big top-level window: the menu bar and status bar should be shared, the "active" window should be decorated in a different way so that it can easily be identified, etc. I suggest to mark this as WONTFIX or maybe to reassign this to GTK.
Please note that a docking widget for GTK+ is under development although afaik no decision has been made when it will be included and how it will look and feel (as well from the users as the developers point of view). A prototype has recently been added to libegg. Should probably reassign this proposal to GTK+.
This bug has been originally reported against GIMP version 1.3.14.
We don't really have a bug for the dock widget in particular, though bug 55393 is an overall tracker for dock/toolbar/menu issues, so I'll make this bug be the general one.
*** Bug 163150 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 304811 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
closing out ancient bugs