Michael, to make MoI 100% OS X conform the red button in the next version should only close the window but not the app.

MoI should only be closed by using the planned "Quit" menu item under the MoI menu entry or the already working cmd-Q shortcut.

Hi Martin,

> Michael, to make MoI 100% OS X conform the red button in
> the next version should only close the window but not the app.

Unfortunately it looks like it will be somewhat difficult for me to make it behave this way, so that's somewhat unlikely to happen. It might be possible to do it but enough effort will be involved that I'm going to wait and see if it's really that big of an issue or not.

So far it's only been mentioned as odd just a couple of times so I'm not really sure it's worth the effort.

It does not seem to be all that uncommon for some apps to exit when their window is closed, I've noticed it happening in some cases even with the built in programs. For example if I launch Calculator.app that comes with OSX Lion, and then push the red button on the calculator window, the app exits there... So it's not like that's unknown behavior on OSX already, built in apps do behave like that too.

Also just in general the "leave the blank app open" thing is something that seems like one of the weirder aspects of OSX anyway, since it seems like it means that you have to do something different to open up a new window (go to the top menu) than what you did the first time when just launching the app.

Is there any actual benefit to the "leave the blank app open" behavior, other than just conformity? Is it just that you want to have something shown in the Dock when you have not pinned MoI to the dock in the first place?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

don't worry I have no problems if you leave the behaviour as it is. I just quit the OS X 10.6 calculator app using the red button. My faith in Apple is gone :-)))

The only benefit I see is when you have several windows open (and MoI is a multi window app) you expect the button to only close the specific window.
I just checked it and MoI does exactly that. When there are two MoI windows open it just closes one Window and if there's just one it closes the Window and (after a Delay) closes the app. Perfect.

Sorry for the trouble I may have caused.

Hi Martin, it's no trouble at all, and in fact it's good for me to get feedback when things are not working quite as you would have expected!

It just happens that this particular thing may be a somewhat difficult for me to change, so I've been kind of waiting to see how important it seems before digging into it.

Also in the next beta I've been able to decrease the delayed response from when you exit the last window to when the app closes, so that kind of odd slightly longish delay won't be so pronounced in the next beta.

- Michael

Hi
without staking too much credit knowing much about this, I believe closing the window and closing the app are different in that the former closes "the file" one is working on whilst allowing to save an instance of it, open another file, or start a new one; whereas the latter obviously closes the application altogether.

This behavior is or became common in most 'modern' OSs (post Windows 95, Microsoft called it Multiple Document Interface. M.D.I.). But, the case was, until one point (in the era of Single D.I.) one could only have one-file-open for each running instance of the application, from AutoCAD v 1 through AutoCAD 14, as is currently MoI or SketchUp in Windows (SDI), unlike SketchUp for Mac (MDI)...

The issue becomes, how many different files open simultaneously can a single application (MoI Mac or Windows) manage?

Cheers,

. Diego .

Hi Diego,

> without staking too much credit knowing much about this, I believe
> closing the window and closing the app are different in that <....>

Yup, but this has a particular meaning on the Mac since the Mac has a method to have an application open and displaying a menu at the top of the screen even when there are no windows of the application open at all. That situation happens on the Mac because the Mac works with menus differently than Windows - on the Mac the window is attached to a dedicated zone of the main screen at the top independent of any windows, while on Windows menus are part of the window itself.


> The issue becomes, how many different files open simultaneously
> can a single application (MoI Mac or Windows) manage?

There's no particular limit - you can have as many open as your machine has available resources to handle.

- Michael