>... on the GTK implementation,
>multiple documents are handled by opening up an entirely new window.
>This seems to me to contribute to desktop clutter. Would notebook tabs
>be a possible solution to this?
That's how SIAG/pw (a lightweight office suite, see http://siag.nu)
does it. It took about ten minutes to get used to it, then I LIKED it.
(I also like how one can reconfigure its menus without recompiling, but
that's getting off-topic....)
There are two things to consider: useability and familiarity. To para-
phrase the AbiSource folks, "we want a church secretary to use AbiWord
to type up the bulletin." For useability, tabs work well (at least for
me) -- all your documents are available from a strip at the bottom of
the window, you can see at a glance what you have open. Tabs don't take
up too much precious vertical space, either.
LyX's way of handling multiple docs is similar to Windows in full-screen
mode. The active document hides the others; you have to use the Window
menu to see what you have open or to select another document. This is
*not* the way to go.
Familiarity... anyone with spreadsheet experience will probably pick
up on the tabs right away. Others, who are used to Word or Word Perfect
and have never looked at a spreadsheet, may take some time getting used
to looking at the bottom of the window for their docs -- or you may find
yourself needing to hide the tab.
There are people out there who just brain-lock when confronted with
*anything* unexpected. These are otherwise excellent candidates for
AbiWord, but those of us who have to support them must present them
with something they won't be afraid of. (They might never recover if
confronted with something like LyX. :-)
My personal solution to desktop clutter on AbiWord is to run any window
manager that supports multiple desktops (KDE, AfterStep, Gnome, etc) and
give one desktop to AbiWord.
Larry