Re: [Usability] Panel-dockable menubar now possible?

[Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>]

Am So, den 06.06.2004, 16:34 Uhr +0200 schrieb Thorsten Wilms:
> On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 10:20:19AM -0400, Dave Ahlswede wrote:
> > 
> > Maybe it would work to have the menubar shown at the top switched by a mouse 
> > click or keyboard activity in a window, instead of window focus when the WM is
> > in sloppy focus mode, and maybe there could be a time delay as well(such as if a 
> > window is focused for ten seconds, then its menubar gets switched up, but if it's
> > just moused over for half a second, the menubar would stay low)
> 
> Such are impossible (or at least very hard) to get right.
> Would also make for a hard to understand behaviour / unconsistent feel.
> (I use sloppy focus myself.)
> 
> Oh, and personaly, I use only one panel at the top with main menus, window 
> selector, notoification area, virtual desktop thingy ... There is enough 
> useful stuff to be put in panels to make good use of screen edges.
> 
> Not to forget that the MacOS menu model is not exactly easy to understand.
> Can be quite confusing to have the radical menu changes, or to be in a app 
> without any window left.

I think if that is an option at all, it would have to be well-considered
and be based on a new, not yet planned API. From what I can see without
knowing the MacOSish way, such an API would have to allow the desktop
environment optionally (!) to decide where a main menubar should be put.
Else we end up with broken apps outside GNOME. Shouldn't be too hard,
since currently (if I'm taken right) GtkAction/GtkUIManager forces the
application to abstract the menu structure and function from the actual
widgets. We'd have to force it to expose a GtkActionGroup and
descriptive menu string that can be merged into a desktop-wide desktop
bar.
So from what I can see the GtkUIManager thingie basically allows it, but
it may cost a lot of effort to have a clean polished API and I'm not
sure whether we want this at all, or you just want it for the sake of
cloning MacOS ;).
But of course, you're allowed and supposed to put your idea forward,
file bugs and in general mock devels with your vision :).

regs,
 Chris