In a standard Windows application, there is one outer container in which several inner dialogs, windows, pop-ups can open. But no matter how many inner windows are open, the general application only has one entry in the taskbar.
For example, Paint Shop Pro has "floating" settings boxes such as a zoom window. When you click on the zoom window, the entire Paint Shop Pro application gets focus.
This is in contrast to many *nix apps. Each window gets an entry in the taskbar.
For example, GIMP has a taskbar entry for the tools window, the properties window, the image itself, etc. Each window has it's own focus, so other programs can be layered in between the different GIMP windows.
By that I mean, it is possible to have the tools window covered by the media player, covered by the properties window, covered by the file manager, covered by the image window.
You get the point. Very annoying at times.
But at times it's nice that the app doesn't take up the entire screen.
ok i see what you mean... i dunno but i figure that's the doing of the 'window manager', not the X application and certainly no fault of Unix... X doesn't enforce rules like which windows should have taskbar entries, how they should look, how your windows should take focus, how they react to a combo triple-click followed by a Ctrl-Alt-left-click... you get the idea... i haven't really tried the other window managers so i can't tell you which one doesn't do that (multiple taskbar entries thingie)... but i have a feeling you can prevent that from happening if you configure your windows manager...
It might be the window manager, in part. But I've seen the same in Windows with apps that were originally designed for *nix platforms.
Gimp on Windows does the same. Forte on Windows does the same (although the new Forte 4.0 has a new feature to use one container window - for both Linux and Windows versions).
I think for the most part it's how the application was written.
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