RE: ANNOUNCE: Style Guide available for review.

[Paul Hepworth <phepworth s-vision com>]

> Here is another thought about global configuration in gnome.  I have
> noticed that some gnome applications have tear-away menus, whereas
> others do not.  How about making a global configuration that would
> either set all application menus to be torn away or make all menus
> appear on the top of each window.
> 
> The idea here is that the interface would be consistent among all
> apps.  A user could get NeXT-like menus or Windows-like menus
> depending on their personal taste.  I think it would also make sense
> to not allow menus to be torn away if they are set to "stationary".
> This should be a global setting affecting all gnome apps, not
> individual apps.
> 
My preference for menu-bar vs tear-off is not global.  Rather it is
per-application.

Here's one idea:  use the established X mechanism for setting
preferences:  the X Resource DAtabase.
If I want all menubars (the default):  *appMenuBar:  True
But if I want my DesktopFileManager to use only pop-and-pin menu's
DesktopFileManager.appMenuBar:  False

But my preference is to have all apps sport a menubar the first time
they are run, but ALL menubars may be torn-off (and they convert to
pinned NeXT-like menus).  If I want to re-dock it, I drag it to the
menu-bar are.  Likewise all toolbars may be floated or docked.  (A menu
is just a type of tool palette;  menus and icon tool palettes should
even be able to share a line (be docked side by side)).
Then, the *application* saves the state of the menu (and toolbars) in
whatever way the application uses for storing settings (the user doesn't
care).
The next time I run the application, it has the menu and toolbar
configuration I left it with.

This way, if I'm a die-hard NeXT-menu guy, I need only drag the menu bar
off the app the first time I run it.  (I.e. once ever per application.)


Paul