Re: Question about menus in GNOME 2.x releases

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> Things I think we can fix pretty easily for the 2.x series:
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>   * Duplication of menuitems should not happen. (cf. sawfish items in
>   "Advanced" and "Advanced-->Sawfish" prefs.

Actually, duplication is sort of tricky to fix. I'm working on it. The
problem is that we are merging in GNOME 1.4 menus. If you installed
GNOME2 with proper package dependencies setup the GNOME 1.4 menus would
be removed and no duplication would occur. This is primarily a problem
for testers, but it *is* one I'm working on fixing because a good
experience for testers is important.
   
What I've done for now based on the recommendation of jrb is to not
merge capplets from GNOME 1.4 into the GNOME 2 menus at all. That should
address your specific problem with Sawfish duplication.

The general case is more tricky. The ugliness resulting from menu
merging made my first reaction "I want to turn off merging". But I think
that's wrong...esp. since most apps have not been ported to GNOME2. One
possible idea that came to mind was to create a GNOME 1.x submenu in
each menu where merged items went. For various reasons, primarily the
extra complexity of the menu system, I decided this was a bad idea (I'm
trying to avoid personal vanity re the menus and focus on what actually
helps users out the most). If people really like this I guess we could
still do it. Dunno.

One idea I'm working on is to possibly not display .desktop files that
are merged in when a non-merged file of the same name exists. This is
not precise, and could potentially result in wrong choices. But it might
be the least of two evils.

As a side note, we now have the easy technical ability to merge KDE
menus too if we so desired. I'm inclined to, not sure if they should be
in a submenu or merged straight in.

>   * Preferences-->Advanced-->Sawfish is too deep, but  
>   Preferences-->Advanced is too crowded with the Sawfish items in it. 
>   My suggestion would be to name the Sawfish item "Window Manager" and
>   put it under Preferences directly, rather than Preferences-->Advanced.

Yes, that's a little deep. The Sawfish items will eventually go away,
replaced by a single "Window Preferences" item that can change the
preferences for a few window managers from a single location.

> Things that we shouldn't bother dealing with right now:
> ------------------------------------------------------
>   * GIMP menuitem gone (will come back in next release I hear)

Yes. I hope they actually follow the GNOME 2 HIG and call the menu item
"GIMP Image Editor" rather than just "The GIMP". The latter is totally
useless to new users. The former makes some hackers unhappy because it
seems redundant when you expand the acronym "GNU Image Manipulation
Program Image Editor", but I think its sort of pedantic to base menu
name choices on that when it really affects the usability of the item
for many people.

-Seth