Re: UI - object-activation and deactivation

[Jody Goldberg <jgoldberg home com>]

On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 05:10:04PM +0200, Lutz M?ller wrote:
> 
> On 11 Jul 2001 20:31:59 +0200, Lutz M?ller wrote:
> 
>     Hi!
> 
>     I am currently trying to fix gnumeric's handling of bonobo-objects. 
> 
>     Situation: You can activate a bonobo-object in gnumeric by
>     double-clicking on it. At this point, the bonobo-object's menu items
>     will get added to gnumeric's menu (guided by placeholders). If the
>     bonobo-object is deactivated, those menu items will disappear. So
>     far so good.
> 
>     The problem is that the names of gnumeric's menu items and those of
>     the bonobo-object (in my case EOG) aren't necessarily different.
>     Right now, when the EOG-object is activated, you end up with a File
>     menu like this:
> 
>     - New
>     - ...
>     - Save As (from gnumeric)
>     - Send (from gnumeric)
>     - Save As (from EOG)
>     - Send (from EOG)
>     - Print Setup (from gnumeric)
>     - Print Preview (from gnumeric)
>     - Print (from gnumeric)
>     - Print Setup (from EOG)
>     - Print Preview (from EOG)
>     - Print (from EOG)
>     - ...
> 
>     You cannot distinguish the gnumeric's menu items of EOG' ones.
> 
>     Possible solutions:
>     (1) As far as I know, the KDE guys would hide gnumeric's menus while
>     the bonobo-object is activated.
>     (2) Bonobo could hide only those menu entries of gnumeric that are
>     also provided by the bonobo-object.
>     (3) Bonobo could make the bonobo-object's menu items appear
>     differently. Or gnumeric's ones greyed out (but still accessible)? 

This is a good question.
(1) would seem to indicate that all apps are really just a single
generic shell that morphs depending on which control it is
displaying.

(2) seems confusing.  I envision a situation where one app has onlt
Print but no Print Preview, it gets embedded and overrides the
container's Print menu item.  The user is left with an app that
prints the component, but previews the container ?

(3) This seems like an ugly version of (1)

None of these approaches seems immediately correct to me.  It feels
as if the various menu/tool items can have different behaviours.  Some
like 'Exit/Quit' should always be there and belong to the container.
Others like a format toolbar seem like they should belong to the
active component (notice I say _toolbar_ not just a single item).
Yet others like edit copy/paste seem unclear given that we don't
have a global clipboard.

I'm sure there have been usability studies of this.  Has anyone seen
any literature or done any detailed studies ?  The Bonobo code looks
like it can do everything including slicing bread, what do we want
it to do ?