Close Button disabled. Why?

In modern world of software the X button on every window’s corner always means Close Window. In Dorico we have it grayed out on every setup window. Why they don’t connect it to the seme close function that responds on hitting of Close button on the bottom of window?

Also if there are changes made on the parameters in that window, the X button if it is connected to the Close button, will perform all the same checkings. So there is no real reason why X button on every window is grayed out. Correct me if I’m wrong.

From a random internet page:

Press Alt+F4 to close a window. This keyboard shortcut will close the currently-active window just like clicking the X. If the window you’re using doesn’t have the X at the top-right corner, this combination of keys should do the trick.

In Dorico it is
Ctrl+Shift+W to close a project window respectively
Cmd+Shift+W on a Mac.
You might re-assing this in the preferences.
Have you tried to replace them with an X?

The reason for this might be that Dorico is a cross-platform application (Mac/Windows) relying on a certain framework to be programmed. I am a total amateur so this is pure guesswork.

Thank you for your time.

I know all the standard keyboard shortcuts for last two centuries. It was like a joke you told about them :smiley:

Using PC/Mac keyboard in studio while one hand is on the mouse and second hand on the MIDI keyboard leads me to use mouse to open/close windows. Yes - close using mouse is the only logical use of mouse after opening window using the mouse because hand is on the mouse.

The question arose because I have mouse moved automatically to the corner where the X button is in case I need to close the window.

In some programs if we press Alt+F4 in preferences or similar window inside the main window, it leads to closing of the main project window. Therefore Alt+F4 is to close the main window.

As far as I know there are no differences between operation systems. Windows have X button while Mac have red dot on opposite corner. Is it also disabled on those windows of settings/preferences?

Hi Arthur, the red dot is not disabled for project windows, but closing a project window is like lifting a heavy bag, it’s not instant, you can feel there is a lot of processing going on in the background before the window actually disappears. In my working environment I leave one project open all the time. It feels safe that way. I try to avoid opening further projects or switching between them.

Most of Dorico’s dialogs are modal, and it’s conventional for modal dialogs on both Windows and macOS to either have no close button in their caption bars, or for the close buttons to be disabled. Typically on Windows these dialogs don’t show a close button at all; on macOS, the “traffic light” buttons appear, but depending on whether the dialog can be resized, either all of them will be disabled or all but the “zoom” (green) button.

For modeless dialogs like the five main options dialogs, we also have the close button disabled because it emphasises that you need to actively choose whether to apply or discard the changes before you close the dialog. We could potentially change this in future to allow the close button to trigger the same check as clicking Close, i.e. to prompt to apply the changes if there are any unsaved. But this is unlikely to be something we look at in the near future, as there are many more important things for us to be working on.

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Thank you for your answer. Now future seems brighter :slight_smile:

I just want to say that disabling X button takes the same time as to redirect X button to the same function as Close button is leading to. I’m sure that in that deep Mac has the same functionality.

Sorry, I’m programmer and I am quite critical of the user interface. That’s my job for this century.

@ArthurNeeman
See these posts (if with “takes the same time” you mean “it is easy to implement/change”, otherwise ignore my reply :wink: ):

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Christian, too much letters. It doesn’t help.

it might be helpful to others though, Arthur.
I always like your creative approach - and it is good to see that you are not going easy on your suggestions. Something will stick :slight_smile:

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