Request: Remove borders on column views

I suggest that borders between columns are redundant and should be removed.

Columns are by their nature delineated regions. The use of borders around columns provides explicit delineation. But … When multiple columns are left-jusified against one another, the delineation from one column to the next is often already “self-evident”. The borders become redundant “fluff”.

The app Papers3 shows column views without explicit border lines. The columns are offset slightly from one another to provide additional clarity of the implicit delineation between them. By comparison, because its columns have borders, one has the impression with DT of needing to “read through/distinguish from border lines” to “see” content. This is especially true because the borders have the same color and color density as some of the text in the columns. Reading content in column views in Papers3 is easier than reading the same in DT.


JJW

The Finder has borders between columns.

Yes but …

  • The borders on the columns in the Finder are NOT the same color as the text inside the columns.
  • Content in the columns in the Finder does not run “butt up against” the column border (e.g. the meta-icons to show duplicate/replicate and other information in DT are butt-up against the right edge).
  • Text content in the columns for Finder are always offset by icons (not so in DT).
  • I find the borders on the Finder columns are also modestly distracting at times (yes … subjective … but see Papers3 for the clarity of the opposite case).


JJW

An option won’t hurt to have available. Personally, the borders don’t bother me, but I can’t imagine the time to implement that hard for something like this and could make a decent v3 option.

This is a decision I am perfectly happy to leave up to the developer to make for me. I’ve used Papers 3 and DEVONthink for years and the presence/absence of a divider between columns doesn’t really significantly impact my use of either application.

I realize that different things bother different people, and I’m plenty bothered by lots of little nitty gritty details, but if every application put in options for all of these nitty gritty details, then nobody would get anything done other than fiddle infinitely with the most minute details, including the developers!