Re: larger than screen menus

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

saari@netscape.com (Chris Saari) writes:

> So what is the best way to handle menus that have more items than can be shown
> on the screen? On other OSes the menu auto scrolls, is there a plan for GTK to
> do this?
> 
> I know this is bad UI design, please don't flame me for that, I don't control it.

Unfortunately, this has simply never been implemented. It's not
fundementally hard to do; its just that the people with the knowledge
to do it have never really needed the feature, and it is just
a bit to messy to do from an abstract feeling that it should
be there. Patches would be appreciated (though GtkMenu* is 
rather scary code.) Otherwise, hopefully its something I'll
have time to do at some time before GTK+-1.4.

My personal fealing is that scrolling is better than continuation
menus. Certainly better than continuation menus where you have to
go all the way to the button of the screen to access the 
next column - like the Motif continuation menus.

You could add continuation menus by hand as submenus, though it might
not come out looking quite perfect; that's probably the easiest way to
do it without modifying GTK+.

Regards,
                                        Owen