Re: Menu guidelines updated

["Michael T. Babcock" <mbabcock fibrespeed net>]

> hmm. There are two schools of thought here. One is that the name of
> the first menu should be standard, the other is that it should adapt
> to its context even at the expense of consistency.

For sake of argument ;-) ... I think the positional factor is standard
enough for applications that do not deal with "objects" of some form
(files, etc.).  "Terminal", for example, would be a good name for the
first menu item in each of gnome-terminal and other terminal programs,
instead of the full app name.  "Game" for a game, not the name of
the game ... etc.  

Generic enough to be consistent across applications of the same 
type would be my mantra ...

On the note of file opening, reverting ... the file menu really does
depend on what gets decided for a standard OPEN dialog.  If the
open dialog becomes something like MS' Office 2000 dialog
(I will have screenshots of it at 
http://www.fibrespeed.net/~mbabcock/images/office2k-open/
within the next 5 minutes or so for those who haven't seen
it), some of the File menu options become quite redundant.
If, OTOH, we go for complete simplicity in the open dialog,
we need more options on the File menu.

As for reverting within the opening of a file, I have seen a few
apps that offer a dialog such as (verbose on purpose, not
an actual dialog suggestion):
"You already have <filename> open in another window.
Would you like to open a new copy of it in a new window
or revert that open copy back to its last-saved state?
[ new copy | revert existing | cancel ]"
-- 
Michael T. Babcock
CTO, FibreSpeed