Re: global menubars in GTK+

[Dan Winship <danw gnome org>]

On 05/25/2009 04:14 PM, Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> On 05/25/2009 02:04 AM, Nemes Sorin wrote: 
>> With widescreens even on a mac globalmenu loose it's sense.
> 
> Kinda funny you specifically mention a mac -- do people in the mac
> community complain about having a global menu?  You'd think you would
> see that a lot if it really was a problem, since global menu is the only
> option on macos.

Actually, yes they do complain, although almost none of them realize
that that's what they're complaining about. Google for "os x mouse
acceleration". From the first hit:

    So what's wrong with Mac OS X's mouse acceleration curve? Simply
    put, it's the wrong shape. ... In practical terms this means that,
    frequently, as a user tries to use the mouse to move the pointer
    from point A to point B, the pointer motion feels sluggish. The
    user then tries to compensate for the sluggishness by moving the
    mouse faster, and the pointer suddenly goes flying across the
    screen and overshoots point B...

    It wasn't always this way. Under Mac OS 9 and earlier, the curve
    was different and provided more natural mouse behavior. Then, for
    some reason, Apple apparently decided to fix something that wasn't
    broken and changed the curve.

That "some reason" is the mismatch between large monitors and a global
menu bar; with a reasonable acceleration curve, it's too hard to reach
the menu bar on a large monitor (and Apple doesn't sell small monitors).
So they mangled the mouse acceleration to make it easier to fling the
pointer across the screen, at the expense of making it harder to make
fine pointer movements. But then, most naive users aren't very good with
fine pointer movements anyway, so it's only the expert users who get
annoyed with it. And boy do they get annoyed with it.

-- Dan