Re: Menus

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

6-Nov-98 00:34 you wrote:
> Khimenko Victor <gnome-gui@khim.sch57.msk.ru> wrote:
>> Fo example in Netscape Communicator I'm have "Encoding" submenu as second level
>> submenu in "View" menu. But it's by far most used submenu here in Russia !
>> I'll be really glad to see it as top-level menu (or may be even better just few
>> items from there in button bar of my Netscape window). But I'm could easily
>> imagine that this menu will be [almost] useless for english-speacking users.
>> Or gwp: when you are in "text entering mode" you'll need one set of tools handy,
>> if you are in "editor" mode you'll need other set of tools, etc.

> I suppose this has been solved already with tearable menus? of course you
> have to be able to tear (and stick to the desktop) sub-menus as well, but if
> you look at, e.g. afterstep, the whole root menu works that way. it's great.
> if you want to test all the backgrounds, you take decorations->pictures and
> then just stick the list to the desktop and click on them in succession. :)

AFAIK GNOME does not have tearable menus. M$ Office 97/M$ Developer Studio 9[78]
have. But in M$ Office 97/M$ Developer Studio 9[78] there are also toolbars
and you could put menu in toolbar or toolbar button in menu. And all context
menus are configurable as well! The only problem there is that carefully
tuned layout could not be extracted and put on other comp, sended via e-mail
etc: layout is stored somewhere deep in configuration files (Normal.dot for
Word, for example). Yes, proposed change was more or less addition of totally
configurable (and thus tearable) menus. And IMO this could ne done without
adding a lot of code in each and every GNOME program but with heap of code in
one specialized library (now existing API for menus and toolbars will be
depricated) and the same amount of code in programs...

>> just now :-) I'm even think that this approch will give as possibility to
>> create "self-adjustable" menus without applications rewriting if this approach
>> turned out to be usable (I'm not sure that this approach will be usable but
>> who knows?).

> <aargh> :)

> the self-adjustable menus are one of the most stupid things I've ever seen
> in a gui. if there's a single rule of ui design they don't violate, someone
> please tell me.

> they're simply awful.

Do you seen them "in work" ? I'm not. And thus even IMO it's stupid idea I'm
could not be 100% sure here.