Re: Menus

["Khimenko Victor" <gnome-gui khim sch57 msk ru>]

4-Nov-98 12:52 you wrote:
> gelderk@natlab.research.philips.com wrote:

>> I meant, that the article favours configurability; part of the
>> foot-discussion was about its start-menu look-alike-ing. If that is
>> configurable, any user who does not like the foot (or its placement),
>> can replace it with what he/she _does_ like.

> (c:  Gotcha.  Couldn't tell where you were coming from....

> The configurability angle did come up in the foot debates of yore.  It think it
> was established that the user should be able to configure whether the foot menu
> shows up as a foot icon (or some other icon), or as a text string ("GNOME",
> "App", or whatever; no consensus on what exactly to call it).  I don't think
> there was really any discussion about allowing the user to completely remove
> the foot menu, i.e. merge it into the File menu.  I guess I hadn't really
> thought of that before.

> A lot of the debate focussed on whether or not we even needed a menu to the
> left of the File menu, and how menu contents should be organized inside the
> menus.  I don't think there was ever a consensus on this point.

> Hmmm, you do suggest an interesting possibility: allowing the user to change
> the ordering of his/her menus.  How much power should we allow here?  Should we
> allow the user to totally (i.e. hopelessly) scramble his menus into any order
> he chooses?  [The altered menu order would have to be saved in ~/.gnome, of
> course.]  Is that more dangerous than helpful?  If so, should it be restricted
> to reordering the top-level menus only?  Or should the menu items be fair game,
> too?  Should we restrict menu item changes to a special menu (e.g. a "Tools" or
> "User" menu?) that exists specifically for user control?

> I dunno.  Most of this was kicked around months ago, but I don't think anything
> was decided on.  I could be wrong.

In fact this working solution you could see in M$ Office 97! Or in M$ Developer
Studio 97 (or 98). There are exactly one unalterable menu (AFAIK) -- system one
(not exactly proposed foot menu but more like Window Manager menu). There you
could create more then one menu, you could put menu outside of window, of
course you could rearrange items in menu [almost] as much as you wish (few
non-alterable menus still exists), etc. You could even rip menu on parts and
put this parts in toolbar ! And in fact there are not two types of GUI elemets
(menu and toolbar) but one (still with two "subversions": menu toolbar still
are slightly other then other toolbars; items for dorp-down menus in all
toolbars except "menu toolbar" will be with small triangle on right side):
you'll find "Menu bar" in the list of toolbars! Each button in toolbar could be
in the one of three forms: "image only" (not allowed for drop-down menus),
"image+text", "text only". In "alwars visible" menu types (not "horisontal
menus" -- you could attach menu to left (or right) side of window and this
case this will be vertical (but not drop-down) menu) you could use all three
types of buttons while in drop-down menus you could use only two types
"text only" and "image+text". Unfortunatelly if you'll try REALLY do this a
lot of embedded applications will screwed up but it's other story... So you
could try "total configarability" at work NOW. Of course (very Microsoft'ish :-)
it's more "prof of concept" then real working solution and heavily rearranged
menus could lead to crashes but it's other story again... In fact to me this
looks like [almost] ideal solution of problem but this crashes :-(( It's
possible to do sich thing reliable at all ? If answer is "yes" then it's will
be [almost] ideal solution. And if toolbar will be "dockable" not only to sides
of main window but to sides of screen as well you'll be able to get Macintosh
style if you'll wish...