Menu groups vs. use of separators

[Alex Jones <alex weej com>]

Hi list

I've been looking at how Rhythmbox allows plugins to manipulate menus
(via UI manager magic), and it dawned on me that there is no way to
separate these out visually, other than to attempt to guess whether
there should be a separator placed above and/or below what you're trying
to insert. Of course, what I really want GTK to do is to insert
separators *between* groups of menu items. Having this kind of ability
would greatly simplify much goofy logic that is currently in place in a
lot of applications to decide where separators should be placed.

I think it would make more sense for menus to implement groups (and
hence separation) in a similar fashion to submenus, and deprecate the
use of separators.

The implementation could even be implemented *as* submenus, but with a
flag set on the parent (e.g. "flatten") to tell GTK whether to display
it as a single menu with separators between child menus. We could take
advantage of the inherent label a group (which is really just a submenu)
would have and incorporate it into the UI, or we could hide it. Either
way, it's probably useful for a11y. Here's an example for Ephy's
"Bookmarks" menu

File
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Bookmarks (flatten=true, labels_visible=false)
	Bookmark Management
		Add Bookmark...
		Edit Bookmarks
	Topics
		Topic 1
			Bookmark
			Bookmark
		Topic 2
			Bookmark
			Bookmark
	Uncategorised
		Bookmark
		Bookmark
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Sometimes separators are used very heavily, and implementation by
submenus might be tedious. Perhaps some API could help.

If I'm not clear somewhere, feel free to bounce back an email and I'll
try to clear it up.

Thoughts?
-- 
Alex Jones
http://alex.weej.com/