GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 352978
[KB-Fixed] Remove the "Close Window" option off the menu
Last modified: 2009-08-30 05:52:40 UTC
I use Evo to read mail. I don't use "Hide deleted messages" and expunge manually using ctrl+E. And ctrl+E is next to ctrl+W that is a shortcut for "Close Window". Moreover, other than the "Close Window" option, there's also a quite option in the same File menu, and that's got a ctrl+Q shortcut. I really cannot understand the different between Close Window and Quit. Actually I thought I do. I opened a composer window and chose Close Window in the main window, expecting that maybe my composer is not closed... but it was, and Evo quit. So, for the reason stated in first paragraph I suggest removing the Close Window menu entry and its shortcut from the main Evo window. As I mentioned in second paragraph, that option has not been any useful functionality anyway, so removing shouldn't cause any harm. The composer and individual message views should still have "Close ctrl+W" like they do currently.
the difference is that you can use "file > new window", so you don't always have to switch the components within one evo window, but to tab between two different evolution windows, so you can close one of them by using control+w, and both of them by using control+q.
Open a window for your calendar or address book, along with the one for mail, and choose File->Quit and see what happens. Evolution isn't solely a mail client. I think the proper request would be that window handling code simply needs to account for composers/etc... as well. Or the main window's Close Window should be disabled if there is only one main window or something. But we can't just remove close window from the main window's file menu.
(In reply to comment #2) > Open a window for your calendar or address book, along with the one for mail, > and choose File->Quit and see what happens. Evolution isn't solely a mail > client. I think the proper request would be that window handling code simply > needs to account for composers/etc... as well. Or the main window's Close > Window should be disabled if there is only one main window or something. But we > can't just remove close window from the main window's file menu. Agreed. Although I can also argue that a Quit item should only close the mailer, not the entire suite. That's what gedit does for example: Close closes a tab. Quit closes the window.
behdad, IIRC OOo, Firefox has the similiar concept like evolution. It wont be fair to compare this with the functionality of gedit tabs. May be rephrasing the menu items can help to understand the concepts better. And regarding shortcuts W/E, if you would have seen the quick ref card of 2.4, you would have realized that Evo ran out of keyboard shortcuts. We did review a lot and try to remove unwanted keys, remove duplicates, take HIG suggestions, etc. But there are few issues like this. We are in the progress of implementing a Shortcut editor. It was supposed to be in for 2.8, but couldnt make it, should be part of 2.10 (Hope so). It should solve all the issues like this and the user can change to what he needs.
(In reply to comment #4) > behdad, IIRC OOo, Firefox has the similiar concept like evolution. It wont be > fair to compare this with the functionality of gedit tabs. May be rephrasing > the menu items can help to understand the concepts better. I don't agree. Neither OOo nor Firefox is part of the GNOME project. Moreover, Firefox is a single app. Also, Calendar and Mailer should really behave like separate apps if in different windows. Scenario: 1) Have Evo Mailer open reading mail. 2) Click on the clock applet to get the month calendar view 3) Double click on the calendar view to get Evo Calendar pop up 4) in the Evo Calendar, check what you supposedly wanted to check, and Quit 5) Observe Evo Mailer is gone... Just reproduced it. > And regarding shortcuts W/E, if you would have seen the quick ref card of 2.4, > you would have realized that Evo ran out of keyboard shortcuts. We did review a > lot and try to remove unwanted keys, remove duplicates, take HIG suggestions, > etc. But there are few issues like this. We are in the progress of implementing > a Shortcut editor. It was supposed to be in for 2.8, but couldnt make it, > should be part of 2.10 (Hope so). It should solve all the issues like this and > the user can change to what he needs. Please do. My fingers feel a lot worse since I switched to Evo. Having to (remember to) press ctrl+shift+R instead of 'r' (in Pine) is...
> ctrl+shift+R instead of 'r' well, blame the HIG here... workaround: always have two evo windows opened. ;-)
(In reply to comment #3) > (In reply to comment #2) > > Open a window for your calendar or address book, along with the one for mail, > > and choose File->Quit and see what happens. Evolution isn't solely a mail > > client. I think the proper request would be that window handling code simply > > needs to account for composers/etc... as well. Or the main window's Close > > Window should be disabled if there is only one main window or something. But we > > can't just remove close window from the main window's file menu. > > Agreed. Although I can also argue that a Quit item should only close the > mailer, not the entire suite. That's what gedit does for example: Close closes > a tab. Quit closes the window. > In gedit, Quit closes all gedit windows. If you open gedit, and do File->New, and drag the new tab off outside the window to create a new window with that tab, and then choose File->Quit in one of the windows, they all get closed.
> In gedit, Quit closes all gedit windows. If you open gedit, and do File->New, > and drag the new tab off outside the window to create a new window with that > tab, and then choose File->Quit in one of the windows, they all get closed. This is not the case here. gedit-2.14.3 from Fedora Core 5. I don't think it's something Fedora specific.
(In reply to comment #8) > This is not the case here. gedit-2.14.3 from Fedora Core 5. I don't think > it's something Fedora specific. OK. In FC5 with 2.14, I do get the behavior that you describe. However, that is not the behavior that I would expect from a "Quit" menu item. "Close Window" perhaps, but not "Quit." "Quit" should exit the application. I would say that the gedit menu item is now mislabeled after such a UI change, and has broken the concept. The lack of a "New Window" item in the gedit menus also disturbs me. You can only move an open document to a new window, not open a document in a new window, or create a new window, and open a document there. It seems like a pretty arcane workflow to me. The right solution here is not to remove the quit menu item, or make it behave completely unlike quit, but to actually get evolution split up into multiple smaller applications, with simpler code and everything. Once that is done, then the "Quit" menu item can be discussed on a more sane level, for each individual application, rather than the current monolith that is evolution.
Bumping version to a stable release.
The background for this bug seems to be the wider issue of the "Close" and "Quit" menu items in GNOME. For the interested reader (and for the benefit of myself, using bugzilla.gnome.org as my private notebook) I refer to this (old) blog item of Matthew Paul Thomas: http://web.archive.org/web/20030401230620/mpt.phrasewise.com/2003/03/25#a486 . The discussion that this blog item refers to can be found at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2003-March/msg00103.html Similar discussions may have erupted more often. I haven't looked for those discussions.
In the discussion of this bug references have been made to the behavior of the Close and Quit menu items in other applications. The current state of affairs (on Fedora 9's version of GNOME 2.22, but Fedora rawhide's GNOME 2.24 seems to be identical) is that the implementation of those menu items varies wildly between applications. A few, more or less random, observations: gedit: Close (^w): closes tab (i.e. document) Quit (^q) : closes one window nautilus: Close All Folders (^q): closes all nautilus windows Close (^w): closes one window gimp: Close all (shift-^w): closes all open images Quit (^q): closes all gimp windows epiphany: Close (^w): closes tab or window (if last tab) gthumb: Close (^w): closes one gthumb window gnumeric: Close (^w): closes one window Quit (^q): closes all gnumeric windows (of that session; windows of another gnumeric session survive) firefox: Close Tab (^w): closes tab or window (if last tab) Quit (^q): closes all firefox windows pidgin: Quit (^q): only on "Buddy" window, closes all windows Close (^w): only on conversation window, closes window (Of course, firefox and pidgin are only GNOME-ified applications. In my opinion nautilus, gimp and gnumeric deserve credit for their effort to come up with a novel implementation.) It is hard to discover a general rule here. It seems that without some serious (GNOME wide) effort to bring some sort of unification it is not very fruitful to look at other applications for guidance.
(In reply to comment #12) > firefox: Close Tab (^w): closes tab or window (if last tab) > Quit (^q): closes all firefox windows Wrong. firefox: Close Window (shift-^w): closes window Close Tab (^w): closes tab or window (if last tab) Quit (^q): closes all firefox windows
Compromise: Could we at least disable File -> Close Window if only one shell window is open, since the behavior in that case is identical to File -> Quit?
(In reply to comment #14) > Could we at least disable File -> Close Window if only one shell window is > open, since the behavior in that case is identical to File -> Quit? 0) Disable: hide or make insensitive? 1) Why disable "File > Close Window" instead of "File > Quit"?
Although my comment #12 doesn't give this much weight: a small step towards consistency could be made by a "s/Close Window/Close/". Would that change be helpful?
0) insensitive. we want menus to be consistent and not change all the time. 1) because quit is stronger than close, in my opinion. also see section 4.4.1.5. in http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/menus-standard.html.en
(In reply to comment #16) > Although my comment #12 doesn't give this much weight: a small step towards > consistency could be made by a "s/Close Window/Close/". "Close" in other apps refers to the current document, but Evolution doesn't operate in terms of documents. I think I'd prefer to be explicit about what you're closing. Agree fully with comment #17.
(In reply to comment #18) > "Close" in other apps refers to the current document, but Evolution doesn't > operate in terms of documents. I think I'd prefer to be explicit about what > you're closing. Not (strictly) in nautilus, pidgin, or epiphany. HIG suggests close (but with document centric explanation. But in the current situation there is little reason (for me) to feel strongly about my suggestion. Much of what others and I brought should be discussed, decided _and_ implemented GNOME wide, I guess.
Comment #14 implemented on the kill-bonobo branch. I consider this fixed.
The "kill-bonobo" branch has been merged into "master" and will debut as Evolution 2.29.1. We believe the branch has addressed the reported issue. If you find the issue still exists in version 2.29 or later please feel free to re-open this bug. Closing as FIXED.