[scribus] Newbie Mac User

[John Morris]

Hi Sveninin,
   Thanks for your thoughtful reply. My basic response is, Yes, I can 
do that, but that is not what I want to do. Read on for the details 
if you are interested.

>Don't know how your Mac window manager treats Scribus
>windows, but normally there should be 3 buttons in upper
>right corner of the (Scribus) application window;
>'Minimize', 'Restore down' and 'Close', respectively from
>left to right. Those buttons are 'document-window-specific'
>and should not be confused with the similar
>'application-specific-ones' often above them (but last time
>I used a Mac they were in the upper-left corner). By holding
>the mouse pointer over them you should see their names in a
>tooltip frame.
>'Restore down' permits resizing multiple document windows
>inside of the main (Scribus) application window.

   Yes, those buttons are available in Scribus in the upper left-hand 
corner, where they are in just about every Mac application. While the 
tool-tips don't show (they do for the toolbar buttons), they are not 
needed because these buttons' functions are familiar across the 
interface.
   However, these buttons don't help much with what I want to do. I 
don't just want to jump from one application to another or from one 
set of applications to another set. I need access to all my 
applications all the time in as flexible a way as possible.
   Sometimes I need to see a client's email message while working on a 
layout document. Sometimes I need to see a Word document while 
marking up a PDF file. Sometimes I need to see two layout documents 
at the same time while referring to a couple of email messages as 
well as a drawing in illustrator and an image in Photoshop. Those are 
the simple cases and it gets much more complicated from there.
   Aside from the wasted screen real estate of the extra window title 
bar, my main problem with the whole MDI is that it puts an opaque 
background behind all my Scribus windows. That means I can't arrange 
the Scribus windows in a nonrectangular fashion in order to see the 
little bit of an email message that I need behind those windows. If 
the main Scribus window were completely transparent where no windows 
and no toolbars appeared, I could just maximize the window and treat 
it as if it had toolbars outside the windows. That has worked fairly 
well for me in other applications.
   For what it's worth, I don't really like Apple's new system of 
packing large toolbars at the top of each window. What a waste of 
space, I would much rather have a single toolbar with small icons 
that I can move independently of the window and can serve multiple 
windows. The one saving grace is that I can quickly hide the toolbar 
with a click on the button at the right edge of the title bar. 
Unfortunately, only some developers understand that I would do this 
to increase the size of the content area _of that window_ and so they 
shrink the whole window when I hide the toolbar.

>Maybe I should not add this; I use a windowing system where
>I can define as many 'Desktops' as I like; one for IRC and
>E-mail and such, another for webbrowser and FTP-client,
>third for managing local files and such, and a
>fourth/fifth/sixth for graphical work. I can switch quickly
>between desktops either vith a mouseclick or a keyboard
>shortcut.
>My systems are Linuxes; there must be a way to do multiple
>desktops on a Mac?

   I've not used Linux in any serious way, but I imagine this is 
similar to Spaces in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). As I understand it, it 
works reasonably well with well-behaved applications. However, I have 
heard that most versions of MS Office do not support Spaces very 
well. I don't use Spaces at all; my life is not that cut and dry. 
There is no one set of applications that I will be using to the 
exclusion of others such that I would ever want to make any of them 
less accessible.
   I primarily get around by closing windows I don't need any more, 
hiding the applications I'm not using immediately, switching 
applications with command-Tab (similar to Ctrl-Tab in Windows and I'm 
sure Linux has an equivalent) and moving windows around when I need 
to see several from different applications.

   I would like to make the switch from Macintosh to a good Linux 
distribution because I like Apple's choices less and less these days. 
However, the Mac OS is deeply embedded in my life and I don't have 
much time to explore other options these days. I imagine that the Mac 
OS will continue to be my main OS for at least the next five years.

Best,
John