Re: Print

["Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn" <xkahn cybersites com>]

On 10 Jul 1998, Preben Randhol wrote:

> * "Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn" <xkahn@cybersites.com

> | (2) The pixmap won't change size depending on the application.  gless and
> | gConfigApplication will have the same size menu item.

> Neither will Main nor Program.

	Yessss...  But, to me, Main and Program don't signify the correct
feel for this menu.  Let's try a screen diagram....

 ____________________________________________________________
| <                Sample Program: Test 1                  X |
|____________________________________________________________|
| Main  File  Edit  Windows  Help                            |
|    .--------.                                            .-'
|..,;          `--------'`--------------------------------`

	Actually, this isn't too bad.  Main is a short enough word that,
if worse came to worse I could live with.
 ____________________________________________________________
| <                Sample Program: Test 2                  X |
|____________________________________________________________|
| Program  File  Edit  Windows  Help                         |
|    .--------.                                            .-'
|..,;          `--------'`--------------------------------`

	Yuck.  A large menu item name.  It looks long, and it will take
up a lot of screen space.  This brings up another problem, which I'll
discuss below.
 ____________________________________________________________
| <                Sample Program: Test 3                  X |
|____________________________________________________________|
| **  File  Edit  Windows  Help                              |
|    .--------.                                            .-'
|..,;          `--------'`--------------------------------`

** ==    ()
         ,() ()    The foot icon.
        |      ()
      .`       /
    (______.--` \/   <- Little graphic element to show it's a menu.
        
	Obviously I like this the best.  :^)  Small, making all gnome
programs easy to recognise, etc.  What a solution!

> | (3) Users are already used to menu items which come from pictures. 
> | (Netscape for the Mac, for example.)  (Or the icon menu on Windows!) If
> | this is a concern, we can have some sort of standard graphic which is
> | added to a pixmap to represent the fact that a menu will open when
> | clicked. 

> I am not used to it. :) At any rate I still think it will confuse the
> user enough to be a big annoyance. Because it's small it will look
> like a decoration and it really doesn't say anything about the
> underlying menu items.

> But is Gnome supposed to be something for Windows and Mac users only?
> Or should it be useful to Linux people too?

	*Ahem* You seem to have mistaken me for a Windows or Mac user. 
I've been using Linux exclusively for my work for around 3 or 4 years now. 
Before that, I used SunOS quite a bit.  I hope I have a fairly good idea
what UNIX programs usually look like, etc.   I also have worked some with
Mac and Windows applications.  I've also worked with NeXT, BeOS, Apple
IIgs, etc.  I'm certainly not an expert, but I don't think this will be
very confusing.  And, I found a Linux app which uses the scheme we're
talking about now -- Applix.


	Which brings me to another problem I've been looking at.  What is
the bevavior of the menus when the window is too small to hold them?  The
Mac doesn't have the problem.  (Well, I've never seen a screen that
small...)  Windows 3.1 just made the Menu bar too lines long...  (This
caused other problems.)  Windows 98 makes the menu look like this:

| File Edit Calculate Crash > |

	The '>' will scroll the menu to the left.  I don't LIKE this
solution, but it shows thought about the problem...

						-Ben

------------------------------------ |\      _,,,--,,_  ,) ----------
Benjamin Kahn                        /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'
(212) 924 - 2220                    |,4-  ) )-,_ ) /\
ben@cybersites.com --------------- '---''(_/--' (_/-' ---------------
 If you love something, write it in C; if it compiles, it is yours; 
                     if it doesn't, it never was.