Re: Conceptual models (was: Re: Detachable menubar idea)

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

On 4 May 1998, Russell Nelson wrote:

> Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn writes:
>  > 	This is a great idea...  Unless you don't use click to focus.  (I
>  > know I don't.)  Well...  Then it should work with auto-raise.  Unless you
>  > don't use it...
> 
> Right, which I don't.  So, if you want gnome to work this way, why not
> program the application to map and unmap menus as the application gets
> and loses focus?  Or is this wrong, and too obvious?

	That's what I said...  Sort of.  I used an ...  umm..  add-on to
Windows 3.1 called New Menus for Windows.  It added all sorts of
interesting things to the platform.  (Actually it was based on olvwm's
L&F.)  It allowed you to detach any menu at any time.  (Popups, menubars,
etc.  And if a menu wasn't available, it could find SOMETHING to do.)
When you configured it to use click to focus (the windows default) then it
did just what I said -- the menus would appear and disappear on focus.  It
left them alone if you were using focus follows mouse.  I never tried
auto-raise, so I wouldn't know what it did.

	One of the reasons they didn't remove the menus with focus follows
mouse, it because of flashing.  If you are moving the mouse quickly across
the screen, you don't want the menus to appear and disappear as you mouse
over applications.

	I know of two remedies.  (1) Make everything operate on a delay.
Maybe .25 or .50 of a second.  If an application has focus for that long,
popup the menu.  If it loses it for that long, hide the menu.   This works
great for sloppy focus.  But for sloppy focus, we need: (2) A menu manager
to be running...  This manager tells an application when to display a
menu.  When a NEW application requests a menu, all the other applications
are informed and they hide their menus.  (This should be fairly
transparent to the programmer.)  (You can use the DISPLAY variable to know
what machine to contact the manager on.)

						-Ben

------------------------------------ |\      _,,,--,,_  ,) ----------
Benjamin Kahn                        /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'
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 If you love something, write it in C; if it compiles, it is yours; 
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