Greying out menu options

[Rhys Weatherley <rweather liberate com>]

Hi all,

I've been lurking here for a few days, so it's about time I popped my head up 
to have it chopped off for asking dumb questions. :-)

What I'm working on: I've been looking around for a free project management 
tool for Linux, a la Microsoft Project, for a while, and came up empty.  So, 
starting a couple of weeks ago, I've begun writing one.  It's early days yet, 
but I intend to GPL it once it gets to a reasonable point.

Anyway, the dumb question: how does one go about greying out a menu option or a 
toolbar button that is not active at present?  I've searched the examples and 
the code for some of the applications, and can't find a good concrete demo of 
how to do it in the correct GNOME-ish way.

Now, before I get flamed for "You shouldn't be doing that anyway.  It's 
bad!!!", maybe I should explain my biases here.  I've been writing commercial 
X-based software for Unix for the last few years, and the one thing that really 
gets non-techie users and QA (testers) bent out of shape is when they select a 
menu option and it doesn't do anything.  I've literally gone to war with QA on 
several occasions over whether an option should be greyed out or not.  In the 
end, I just gave in and greyed the damn thing out.

As GNOME goes more and more mainstream, you are likely to come across the same 
problem.

Cheers,

Rhys Weatherley.