On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 8:33 AM, David T. Lewis <lewis@mail.msen.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 12:45:29AM -0500, Chris Muller wrote:
> >
> > It turns out that the preference lives in category "browsing", as opposed
> > to
> > say "windows".
> >
> >
> -- I guess it could be either but it's also a browser function.  If there
> is already a usable browser on the desktop for whatever you're asking for,
> implementors, senders, hierarchy browser, package browser, MC browser,
> etc., it'll bring forth that browser rather than open yet another, using
> more memry, and that you'll just have to close someday.
>
> Oh, if you search preferences for "Windows" it's right there..
>
> I'm curious whether, when you say, "open..." | Transcript, and you get the
> same Transcript instead of a new one, does that annoy you too?

It's probably mainly a matter of habit and training, but no that does not
annoy me.

I am accustomed to thinking of the transcript as a single thing that can
be written to from anywhere, somewhat like a stdout stream. I am also
accustomed to thinking of the transcript window itself as being the thing
that gets written to. So if I tell the system to open that singleton window,
and it is already open, I am not surprised that the system refuses to make
two instances of something that is supposed to only have one.  

On the other hand, if I tell the system to inspect something, I expect it
to open an inspector on that thing.
When I ask the system to this, and it
decides to do something else instead, I am annoyed.

Ah, I think I finally realized the root cause of the annoyance.  You had the inspector window already open, but it was not occluded by any other window.  So when you invoked 'inspect' in another window, there was not as dramatic a change on the screen, just the focus shift.  If you didn't notice that, it may have left you thinking the inspect command "didn't work."  By opening a new window every time, the users attention is more effectively directed to the location of the window on the screen.

This makes me wonder if a #flash would help for that scenario..