Menu Persistency

["Berin Loritsch" <BERIN LORITSCH cpmx saic com>]

I haven't had a good look into the workings of Gnome--I just got the old version
installed last night--but one thing has bothered me at work forever.  OSes like
Windows and Mac have a perticularly bad habit of closing the menu you are
traversing to give you a modal dialog box.  This is bad!  This is very bad!

It never fails: I am 6 menus deep in the start menu just about to click on the
item I have been searching for all this time, and Winzip pops up its little modal
dialog box asking me to insert another disk.  Sometimes it happens when I get
email notification as well.  As a result, Windows thinks that it is the most
important thing in the world, and closes all the menus so I have to restart my
trek from the beginning only to have my computer tell me that it is done printing
my document!  It even happens when I try to type an email.  (@#&(%@@% I
@#*&@# *HATE* (@#*@(#&%@( WINDOWS!!!!  Our IT department ought to
be shot.

Please do not mistake this as an opportunity to blast other OSes, It is a call
to remove all modal dialogs from the repetior of the application.  If we deem
this an impossible task, then we MUST be able to resume the work we started
before we had to deal with the dialog.  When a window pops up (modal or not),
it should never interrupt what you are doing--traversing menus or typing text.

Hopefully, this is already implemented.  But it should be stated in the Gnome
style guide that modal dialogs should be strictly outlawed for even the most
basic compliance scheme.

Perhaps, we can have a little notifier on the panel that will alert you to a
program that needs attention (much like the mac does on its mini-cpu icon).
Some sort of animation can draw attention to the program that needs
attention.

Am I totally out of my head here?