[Evolution-hackers] Thinking about menus

[Benjamin Kahn <xkahn ximian com>]

With Evolution 2.2 fast approaching with a new plugin architecture, I
(along with Rodney and a bunch of other people) have been looking at the
Evolution menus.  

We've started with with the mailer context menus and the main mailer
menus.  This is needed because the current menus are a discouraging mess
and with menu merging from plugins, things are only going to get
worse.  

The goals are:

      * Get rid of the Actions menu.
      * Make it obvious where to find things.  (Eliminate seeking as
        much as possible)
      * Make common operations available without using submenus.
      * Move closer to the HIG recommendations.
        ( http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/menus-standard.html )
      * Provide a good structure for plugins to add new menu items.
      * Umm...  And simplicity.  

I've posted screenshots of the effort to the Evolution Blog:
http://codeblogs.ximian.com/blogs/evolution/archives/000441.html

The latest version of the glade mockup is here: (I'll try to keep this
current)
http://primates.ximian.com/~xkahn/evo-menus/evo-menus.tar.gz
NOTE: Evolution does not use glade to create menus.  This is simply a
mockup.  It will never be the official version.)

I am generating a patch for Evolution that uses the new menus.  I'm
about 50% done.

And, obviously, a similar layout needs to be designed for the other
components.