Issue 11884

Summary: "Quit" menu item is confusing and unnecessary.
Product: General Reporter: bofh69 <bofh-reg-oo>
Component: uiAssignee: AOO issues mailing list <issues>
Status: CONFIRMED --- QA Contact:
Severity: Trivial    
Priority: P3 CC: issues
Version: OOo 1.0.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Linux, all   
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---

Description bofh69 2003-02-27 10:57:02 UTC
If a user has a spreadsheet open and a word document open, the two windows do
not feel lika "one application" from a user interface point of view. One of them
could be used as a viewer and the other could be used for editing. Choosing
"File->Quit" closes both windows and that surprises the user. A "Warning" dialog
doesn't change that.

Would it not be better to remove the "close" or "quit" menu items from the file
menu and let the remaining menu item close the current window ?

I have never used the "Quit" menu item to close all windows more than by
misstake when I really just wanted to close the current window. I have also
closed a lot of windows by misstake while pressing ctrl-q.

Are there any times when quiting all windows is desired and is that important
enough to warrant a short short-cut like ctrl-q ? I can't see a need for that
and it has of course been removed from my configuration. But should it not be
removed from the default configuration as well?
Comment 1 thorsten.martens 2003-03-11 09:06:21 UTC
TM->BH: This one is a wish for an enhancement, so please have a look.
Thanks !
Comment 2 eric.savary 2003-04-16 15:32:26 UTC
Set to "NEW"
Comment 3 adamhooper 2005-09-12 05:26:57 UTC
I just pressed Ctrl-Q to close a document, and four other documents disappeared
behind it.

I simply cannot think up a single valid use case for the "Quit" menu option. And
I *have* tried for a long time. So this comment is a little "me-too" that
hopefully will draw attention to this issue, which has been ignored for over 2
years.
Comment 4 mjneedles 2005-09-13 20:49:01 UTC
I, for one, disagree.  This menu command and the keyboard shortcuts to it,
Ctrl-Q and Alt-F4, is a common one in multi-doc interface applications to close
the entire application. A little less common is Alt-X.  The common way to close
one window or document is with Ctrl-W or Ctrl-F4.  This is true in Windows as
well as in Linux.  It's really a case of re-training the user to use the correct
command to close a window.  
Comment 5 bofh69 2005-09-14 10:13:57 UTC
I think everyone agrees that it is a common short-cut, but who uses it, except
by misstake? What is the use-case? For me, and the other commentor, it seems to
be used more often by misstake than by will and the time lost is larger than
finding the windows and pressing ctrl-w over and over again the few times you
actually would want to use the feature. I've asked around and I've yet to find
anyone that uses that menu-item, nor short-cut.
Some window managers/OSes allow you to group windows of the same kind in some
taskbar and close them all with the same menu item. Isn't that the feature users
should use if they want that behaviour? 

What "multi-doc interface application" are we talking about? As a user, I see a
text document in an editor, I see a text document for viewing and a spreadsheet,
three different applications in three separate windows. Sure they share a lot of
code and perhaps even the same process, but as a user I don't care about that, I
only see three diffrent applications and I don't expect a "Quit" menu item to
close the other two.
Comment 6 mjneedles 2005-09-15 08:04:28 UTC
Well, I have used these shortcuts a LOT; they are very useful.  Firefox, for
example, is an app that allows multiple tabs in a window, and multiple windows
open at the same time.  Ctrl-W will close a tab or a window that has only no
tabs, but File-Quit or Alt-F4 will close the entire app, all windows and tabs at
once. Granted, Firefox is not an editor, so no files are modified,  but the
effect is the same.  What I like about FF is that it will warn you if you try to
close all the tabs on a window at once.  OOo doesn't do that, and maybe it should.

The big thing to remember is that OOo is ONE application, not 3, 4, or 5, no
matter how many different kinds of documents it can open at once.  Think about
GIMP (opens many kinds of graphic files) or MS-Works (better example). MSW can
open any of at least 4 types of files at once and, though I don't remember
'cause I would not use it even if paid to do so, I think it recognizes the same
command structure.

I repeat, it's a matter of learning the CUA keys and remembering that OOo is one
application, not 6 (writer/calc/impress/draw/base/math). The MS Office suite is
NOT one application, so you would be right if you were using it and got this
kind of behavior.

I must admit that I'm not the typical user; I use keyboard shortcuts heavily,
because I hate having to move my hands from the keyboard back and forth to my
trackball/mouse. When I teach others to use programs on their computers, I teach
them about these shortcuts.  My experience is that most users watching me use my
computer are amazed at how efficient I am.  They WANT to know these shortcuts,
too.  Most have never bothered to learn them.

Tell some unfortunate Windows user who has a rogue website opening up popup
windows in Internet Explorer that they don't have to chase the red X on them
with the mouse, they can just Ctrl-W repeatedly, and they'll thank you profusely!

Anyway, if you want to continue the discussion, let's do it elsewhere.
Comment 7 bettina.haberer 2010-05-21 14:51:19 UTC
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements".