Re: GTK+ Mac OS X state of the union

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

Goran Rakić wrote:
> All things said...
>
> I think that it is silly to assume that poor developers will not do  
> some tweaks for OSX. After all, they will need to make .app bundle  and 
> other stuff, just like we are doing for MS Windows. And even if  they 
> don't, in the spirit of open community somebody will do that and  create 
> native version of Gimp (like now it is with Gimp.app) or  Freeciv or 
> whatever...
>
> Automatic creation based on currently focused window is just plain  
> wrong. It is not compatible with Apple HIG and it will not even work  
> all the time.
>
> What I think will work is to provide OSX top level menu API wrapper  in 
> GTK so we can construct our menus for OSX (remember, it will be  
> different then any in-window menu). And if some app does not do that,  
> GTK can create default menu with application name and Quit menu item  
> with Cmd-Q accelerator in it.

  I agree that "automatic creation based on currently focused window is
just plain wrong", its true that it would be great if this kind of thing
could be done transperently, but only the app writer really knows what
should be in the main app menu.

I have no idea about how the main menu api works on the mac, but it
looks like it can easily translate to a gtk menu bar, maybe I'm missing
something but I dont see why it couldn't just be a menubar in the
application that has been marked by the programmer as the "main menu".

My thoughts on this really are; why should we consider "main menu"
capabilities as something unique to the Mac ? I dont see why any
window manager shouldn't be able to implement the "main menu bar"
shouldnt this kind of thing fit into the "window manager hints" area ?

Cheers,
                   -Tristan