Just to second what Shaw said -- the current behavior should be very very
familiar to Web browser users. They don't have to think about it, it Just
Works the way they expect it. Given the relative market share of browsers
and AbiWord, this is a Good Thing. ;-)
The idea of having close on the last window mean the app's gone too makes
sense in that context. For folks who only work with one document at a time,
this does mean that they'll need to rely more on their desktop environment
to keep relaunching the app for subsequent documents. Otherwise they'll
need to leave multiple documents open to continue having access to the
toolbar / menu to keep opening files.
As various folks have mentioned, MDI apps don't have this problem, but
taking on the overhead of implementing MDI on all platforms wasn't something
any of us was willing to sign up for -- and especially not Shaw, who does
most of our GTK work. :-)
Brian's idea of having close sometimes also mean open a new window is
innovative, but not all innovations work well -- especially when it comes to
touchy-feely GUI issues. I suspect most folks would find a close ==> open
mapping to be a bit counter-intuitive.
>When our Mac port works, I expect it would act just like a normal
>Mac application (close all the windows you can, but until you actually
>exit from the process it's still running).
That's what I'd expect too -- especially if that's the way browsers behave
on the Mac. However, neither Shaw or I are Mac hackers, so we might be
wrong. Whoever owns the Mac port will have the final say on that issue.
And if they make the wrong choice, I'm *positive* that AbiWord users on the
Mac will set us straight.
Paul