nisus.com

Martin and I have been discussing whether or not the preference to open the last document on launch should be checked or un-checked by default.

I argue that it should be unchecked by default, since it is confusing to users why a document has opened all on its own; it forces users to hunt down how to turn it off if they don't want it; it tries to predict users' behavior in ways that even Word doesn't do; and it's annoying to have an application make an assumption like that. Should all text be bolded by default and I have to turn that off?

In short, when I click the icon in my dock, I want NWP to open. If I want the last document I worked on to open, I'll open it. Don't open it for me, thank you.

I'm interested to hear other perspectives on this. Any thoughts?

I like to start up blank and then decide what to do. Anyway, I have set Jers Novel Writer to open the last file, but then I can't be writing two novels at a time -- one being all too much.
By the way, behavior at startup is among the very first things I scan in a new application. I was scared many years ago by Word. Setting Word not to open anything at startup was a pain in the neck, a real masterpiece of byzantinism only M$ could achieve. Such features should be preserved in pickles for future memory.

Greetings, Henry.

I agree with midwinter. The option is right there if I need it, and I do not want the application to do things for me I never asked it to do. If I want to open a file, I'll do it myself; if I want Nisus to do it for me (which I consider non-standard behaviour), I'll tell it to do so.