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i have no idea what the difference is between a MDI and an SDI form or

where why and when i shoudl use an MDI over and SDI or vice versa.



Can someone please enlighten me?



Thanx



Woody

I am not responsible for anything you may see with my name attached to

it, i think.



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SDI = Single Document Interface

MDI = Multiple Document Interface



Most apps you'll create will more than likely be SDI (as are most Windows

apps). An example of an MDI app would be MS Word, where there is a main

window and each document has its own child window.







"Woody" <lost@cyberspace.com>wrote in message



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"BeastFish" <beastfish@for-president.com>wrote in message



A bad example to cite. Word 2000 is NOT an MDI application. This idiotic

decision was reversed in Word XP.



Better to cite Excel, in my opinion.





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"Woody" <lost@cyberspace.com>wrote in message



An MDI application is intended to allow the user to work with multiple

windows at once while keeping them in a manageable container. Often these

windows are related. In Word, for example, every window is going to contain

a word processing document. In Excel, all the windows will be workbooks

(spreadsheets). Access, on the other hand, provides different window types,

such as table datasheets, query designers, forms, etc. However, all these

windows are related to a single database.



Certain actions in an MDI app affect all windows. For example, when you

maximize one child window, they are all maximized, and if you restore (or

minimize) a child window, they are all returned to their un-maximized state

(whether "restored" or minimized). Also, a Window menu is traditionally

supplied to allow quick switching between child windows.



Contrast this to having 5 copies of Notepad (an SDI application) open at one

time. They're all independent of each other and provide no built-in means of

switching to other windows.



The decision to use MDI should be well-thought-out, in my opinion. Just

yesterday I went looking through all the programs I've written to find a

certain piece of information about the default properties of an MDI child

form. It occurred to me that of the 40 or so project folders I had, only one

of them was an MDI application I had designed (and one I inherited). That's

how little I need the specific features of MDI. Some common programs which

provide multiple views of different items (like Outlook provides mail,

calendar, and task views, among others) also decided that they don't need

MDI to do what they do.





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Christ you're right.

They've gone half baked, and put a window menu in - but no 'tile

horizontal'.



never knew that. Whatever were they thinking of? Surely all the amount

Microsoft are braying on and on about reuseability the have already got the

C code to be able to deal with a multidocument application, e.g.

Document/View architecture? What sort of an example are they setting?







"Jeff Johnson [MVP: VB]" <i.get@enough.spam>wrote in message



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never knew that myself because I use word as little as possible - hate the

damn thing!



"Jeff Johnson [MVP: VB]" <i.get@enough.spam>wrote in message



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Well, I guess it's obvious I don't have Word 2000 <g>







"Jeff Johnson [MVP: VB]" <i.get@enough.spam>wrote in message





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