Re: remove interface tab (please don't)

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 20:57 -0500, leftyfb wrote:
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> Here's another reason why this is a bad idea. What about the 3rd party
> applications that rely on menu icons that are now turned off by default
> with no easy way to turn them back on for the average user?
> 
> My example is a project called Gnome SSH Tunnel Manager (gSTM)
> The application creates ssh tunnels using an easy interface. It sits in
> the notification area with easy 1 click(right) access to turn tunnels on
> and off while showing their running status with a red or green light
> next to the name of each saved tunnel.
> 
> This application uses menu icons for it's status icons as well as the
> Quit button at the bottom and "show gSTM" button at the top.
> 
> This is a screenshot of the application in use with menu icons:
> 
> http://dropbox.leftyfb.com/gstm2.png
> 
> This is a screenshot of the application in use without menu icons:
> 
> http://dropbox.leftyfb.com/gstm1.png
> 
> The docked right-click menu is now useless for determining the status of
> the tunnels.

These two screenshots convey the exact same amount of information
to me and the other 10% of males in the world who are color-blind.

Anyway, the stock answer you'll get for this is that the developers
should set the always-show-image property if the icon is important:

http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/stable/GtkImageMenuItem.html#GtkImageMenuItem--always-show-image

I think it's a bit of a bull argument, since developers have had
no experiences in the past that would make them believe this was
important.  And most of us don't spend our days crawling through
API references looking for properties it might be fun to set.

But that is the answer you'll get.

And gSTM does need to be fixed.

-- 
Shaun McCance
http://syllogist.net/