Re: Menu customization

[John R Sheets <dusk smsi-roman com>]

Martin Wahlen wrote:
> 
> >       It's okay.  I wasn't particularly impressed with this feature...
> 
> Well, I have found it quite useful. Especially for public access terminals
> and what not. It prevents the user from even knowing the excistance of
> certain things. Especially if we can "freeze" the state of the menu and
> allow no further customization.

This is a good point: administrative control over menu content. 
Seems like we would need a number of different configuration
levels...

Global/Administrative (in Administrator's panel?):
- Default to use/not use customizable menus (system-wide)
- Override to temporarily disable customizable menus
(system-wide)
- Define universal menu

Local/User (in panel):
- Use/not use customizable menus on this system (optional
override)
- Override to turn off customizable menus (temporarily, for user
only)
- Define extra user-specific menus

Local/Application (in app's foot menu):
- Use/not use customizable menus with this application (optional
override)
- Override to turn off customizable menus (temporarily, app-only)
- Define extra application-specific menus

All three levels of menu definitions would show up in (depending
on the function) either the foot menu, or (more likely) the User
menu.  So as an administrator, you could set up common functions,
like "Log into database" for all users, e.g., in the Parts
Department, and could also mask out undesirable menus, like "Save
Project" for users that should only be allowed to look-not-touch.

Granted, this looks like a pretty hairy monster to implement, but
it would sure make life easier for GNOME administrators.  Set
GNOME apart from the pack!  And it does seem to push GNOME in the
direction we want it to go.

John