Re: [HIG] REVIEW of Mini-HIG draft

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> 47. Mini-HIG > `Integrating Applications with the Desktop' > `Placing
>     Entries in the Panel Menu':
>     >
>     > The panel menu is arranged into a set of broad categories. An
>     > application should place an entry in just one of these categories
> 
>     First, a program should check to see if the Panel Menu exists.
>     (It may have been written for GNOME 2.0, but installed on a much
>     later version of GNOME which doesn't have a Panel.)
> 
>     Then, if the Panel Menu exists, the program should *ask the user*
>     which category (if any) an item should be placed in. I might have
>     biffed all the entries in the `Graphics' category into `Multimedia'
>     and gotten rid of `Graphics', in which case I'd be pretty annoyed if
>     the next app I installed recreated the `Graphics' category just to
>     put itself in it.

Actually, George has been working to make sure this is not an issue.
Panel menu entry locations are determined by the use of keywords rather
than explicitly setting their location. The panel itself determines at
runtime exactly how to structure the menu. This has three major
advantages:

1) When users rename a menu, it will remember the keywords affixed to
it, so everything will be fine when new menu entries are added, but its
totally transparent and users can still delete entries, move entries,
delete and rename categories at will.

2) Its much easier to make changes to the menu in the future because
there is some central control.

3) A future GNOME without a panel (or more precisely without a panel
menu) could still do intelligent things with the keywords, or ignore
them entirely.

>     This (Could) Get (Very) Annoying (Indeed). If GNOME wants programs
>     to specify their task as well as their name, these should be entered
>     in separate fields in the registry -- so that current or future
>     Panel designs can present the name and task in more pleasant ways
>     than crooked parenthesized columns.

Yes, George and I already settled on using seperate "registry" entries
for this, for approximately that reason. I think Maciej and I agree that
we should try to make this sound more natural, for example Nautilus File
Manager rather than File Manager (Nautilus).
 
>     Nautilus should be renamed the File Manager. If a user goes out of
>     their way to choose a program other than the default for a task,
>     then they will know what it is called anyway, and the recognition
>     problem will not be present.

That would be great, yeah. But I think we'd be massively overstretching
our possible influence to try and ask everyone to rename their
applications. Nautilus would probably be doable, but most apps would
not.

-Seth