Sublime User Interface Modus operandi
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[edit] KDevelop UI history
User interface of KDevelop IDE has a long history. The whole goal of UI was always to mimic the behavior of other development environments. KDevelop 1.x and 2.x for example looked like Visual Studio and that UI was good in that the new developers coming from Windows platform didn't feel alienated.
First KDevelop 3 alphas had only the interface that closely resembled IntelliJ IDEA which had probably the best user interface of that time. Later during KDevelop 3 development we added three more so called "UI modes" - "childframe" to resemble Visual Studio 6, "toplevel" that made KDevelop look like Delphi and "tabbed" that was similar to the UI 2.x series had.
These UI modes made KDevelop 3 succeed in making new developers always "feel at home". But we've paid a high price for this achievement. Increased UI-related code complexity and unmaintainability of KMDI UI library (the library to give us those four UI modes - Ideal, Childframe, Toplevel and Tabbed) were among the first reasons KDevelop 3 UI always felt so "unpolished".
[edit] KDevelop UI in 3.4
This situation had to change so in KDevelop 3.4 release we ditched KMDI and used SimpleIdeal UI mode instead. SimpleIdeal mode was build on top of my "newui" library which I wrote as an experiment to create simple and maintainable UI library with only most frequently used features (90% of those regular Ideal mode had). As the result, for the first time since the 3.0 release in 2004 we can offer the user interface which doesn't forget your window and toolview settings, which doesn't loose focus and which allows for editor splitting. This made us believe that UI is clearly the case when "Less is More" works best;)
[edit] The road to the future: Ideal
For KDevelop 4 we of course wanted to keep on "Less is More" road and the first try was the port of newui library to Qt4/KDE4 which I did and called "Ideal". It used Qt4 mainwindows/dockwidgets and provided UI look and feel that closely resembled Ideal mode of KDevelop 3. But Ideal library did not become the foundation of KDevelop 4 UI because the team decided that the new release does not have to look like and work like some other IDE and should bring its own, different concept of operation. Since then we'd been constantly discussing modus operandi of this new interface and only at aKademy 2006 in Dublin, at KDevelop BoF session after looking at pros and cons of various available IDEs we made a final decision. This design decision was clarified several times during IRC discussions later.
[edit] The future is now: Sublime
It was decided that the modus operandi of new KDevelop 4 UI (which I called Sublime) is following:
- there is a project management window which collects all views not directly connected with code editing in Finder-like 3-column interface (the closest match would be the project window in Xcode)
- UI provides support for "areas" (alike Eclipse's perspectives)
- the basic set of areas is:
- code editing area with splitted editor windows (with kate/konqueror-like splitting)
- debugging area (Xcode-like debugger window with only one editor view by default but with possiblility to show more)
- profiling area (like KCacheGrind)
- user interface design area (like Qt designer)
- area configuration includes code editor windows (unlike eclipse)
- each area can be displayed in usual Qt mainwindow with toolviews in dockwidgets
- areas are shown in separate mainwindows so that multiple-monitor setups become the best supported
- one area can be shown in two and more mainwindows by "cloning" the area (unlike Eclipse that pretends that two mainwindows show the same area)
- optionally areas can be switched inside the same mainwindow without opening new ones (like in Eclipse), but this mode of operation will not be default
- it is possible to open as many similar toolviews as necessary (for example, several konsole's)
- it is possible to open several views for the same file in code editor view (unlike KDevelop 3.x)
- instead of tabs for editor windows a "switcher" is provided (but the design for this switcher is still in progress)
One can think from the description above that KDevelop 4 UI will still mimic what other IDEs have. This would be only 20% right. We just took their best ideas, nothing more ;)
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