Re: Mac-style menus

["Michael Rogers" <mrogers cs ucl ac uk>]

> I'm still convinced that the best way to do this is to create a
> Menu Applet which apps will send their menus to.

One thing to bear in mind is that Mac-style menus only make sense in a 
click-to-focus environment. With sloppy focus it will often be impossible to 
reach the menu without losing focus to another app. Possibilities:

* Let the Menu Applet control the window manager's focus policy. Window 
  manager writers will not love you.

* Assume that users have enough common sense not to use Mac-style menus with 
  a sloppy-focus window manager. Somebody will claim that their mother does 
  not have this much sense.

* Implement the feature in a window manager.

> I plan to make this completely transparent to apps. The work of
> getting the menus to the applet would all be handled in the
> GnomeApp menu code. All the user has to do is add the applet to a
> panel and check an option in gnomecc. Apps will then
> automatically use the menu applet.

I think you could just add code to GnomeApp which marks the menubar window 
with a "this is a menubar" property. One line of code.  :)  The window manager 
(any window manager - get it added to the new wm-spec) would detect this 
property and reparent the menubar into a special frame at the top of the 
screen. You might be able to talk the KDE people into doing the same thing so 
it will work for KDE apps under Gnome as well. In fact I think I recall 
hearing that KDE already supports Mac-stlye menus. I'd be interested to know 
how they did it.



Michael