idea: special menuitem in MenuBar of each gnome application

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

 Hi, 

 I have the following idea: to allow application-specific customization of
application's and toolkit's settings, a special toplevel menu item (i.e. of
the same level, as 'File' menu) could be inserted into menubar of each gnome.
It could use '*' as a label (or better an icon of course, but that seems not
to be easily implementable using gtk), and could contain the following menu
items:

[this is a table formatted 8-character tabs]
menu item/submenu item		type		description
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accelerators			MENU		Accelerators-oriented menu

		Lock		CHECKITEM	Locks/unlocks  all
						accelerators that were
						assigned by user

		Forget all custom ITEM		looses all accelerator
						assignments done by user
						during all sessions of running
						this app. 

		Forget new custom ITEM		looses all accelerator
                                                assignments done by user
                                                during current session (*)

Customise UI		 	MENU		Customization UI options

		Dialogs..	ITEM		Runs a corresp. caplet from
						gnomecc to configure dialog
						options.
						Configuration saved to file
						named after App in the
						~/.gnome/custom-ui/
						subdirectory, all changes
						possibly apply on the next
						program run only, but they
						become App-specific. (*)

		Application..	ITEM		Runs a corresp. caplet from
                                                gnomecc to configure app UI
                                                options.
                                                Configuration saved to file
                                                named after App in the
                                                ~/.gnome/custom-ui/
                                                subdirectory, all changes
                                                possibly apply on the next
                                                program run only, but they
						become App-specific. (*)

		Theme..		ITEM		Runs a corresp. caplet from
                                                gnomecc to select theme and
						all associated info.
                                                Configuration saved to file
                                                named after App in the
                                                ~/.gnome/custom-themes/
                                                subdirectory (gtkrc file,
						named after that App, is
						saved there, and looked up
						in that dir next time app
						starts). Theme change applies
						immediately.
						
Forget UI		 	MENU		Menu for cancelling 
customization					customization of various UI
						aspects
		
		Dialogs         ITEM            forgets all customization
						done via corresp. capplet.
						Easy to implement (just remove
						all entries corresponding to
						corresp. capplet from file
						named after app in
						~/.gnome/custom-ui/)

                Application     ITEM            forgets all customization
                                                done via corresp. capplet.
                                                Easy to implement (just remove
                                                all entries corresponding to
                                                corresp. capplet from file
                                                named after app in
                                                ~/.gnome/custom-ui/)

		Theme		ITEM		removes customization of
						gtk theme. The gtk theme
						that all uncustomized apps
						use will be applied
						immediately to this app
							
Enable sound			CHECKITEM	enables/disables the use of
						sound for gui events
						(gnome_sound_init/
						gnome_sound_shutdown)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 These were items that I can think of that can be usable by user (in fact
almost all of them are based on the set of capplets that is available right
now). I think a lot of more items usable for programmers can be added (like
dump memory usage, telling PID, call some script to change priority of that
process, turning debug mode of something, etc).

 I think implementing support for such menuitems will advance gnome in
flexibility even further.

(*) Support for items marked with this are not very straightforward to
implement IMO

 What do you think about all this?

PS: It would be nice if somebody forwarded this letter to
gnome-hackers gnome org since I don't have post-priveleges to do this :(

 Best regards,
  -Vlad