Re: Application menu.

[Shaun McCance <shaunm wolfram com>]

On Mon, 2003-09-15 at 07:18, iain wrote:
> I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I can't remember anything
> about it.
> 
> What are people's views on an "Application Menu" in each program? By
> application menu, I mean a menu like on Macs, with the "iTunes" menu
> before the File menu.
> http://www.stanford.edu/~tristanh/images/bibliographerX_shots/application_menu.jpg
> is a good shot of it.
> 
> Having this menu would mean we would have a place for the Preferences
> menu item, which everyone hates in the "Edit" menu, but can't think of a
> better place for it. Plus the File->Quit item would move here, and I do
> think this is a better place for Help->About really.
> (And the program with the dumbest menus ever - gnome-sound-recorder
> could have more sensible menus too)
> 
> Would it be possible to change to this (if people think its a good idea)
> for 2.6, or would it be in the future?

I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I'm not a huge fan
of application-centric interfaces, and this does raise the prominence of
the application.

On the other hand, Quit does not belong under File, About probably does
not belong under Help, and Preferences certainly does not belong under
Edit.  I will concede to the reality that we do use applications, and
that the interface doesn't just magically get better by ignoring this
fact.

However, we don't develop in a vacuum.  Apple has the advantage of
having complete control of the entire system.  We develop in an
environment with many desktops and many applications.  We may all *want*
to run only GNOMEified apps, but I would guess that most GNOME users run
a few non-GNOME apps.

This is analogous to the button-reordering issue.  The button ordering
used by GNOME is, AFAIC, the correct one.  But it makes GNOME 2 sort of
interface-incompatible with just about all X applications that weren't
specifically written for GNOME 2.  So you sort of have to weigh the
advantages of doing something against the disadvantages of not being
able to get everybody to do the same thing.

For those who weren't paying close enough attention, I voiced a few
concerns and opinions, but didn't actually express support for or
against this.

--
Shaun