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

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 06:18:38PM +0200, Christian Neumair wrote:
> 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.
>
> 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 ;).

The GtkUIManager does not allow it.  An app can get an explicit
GtkWidget for menus or toolbars.  A widget that it is free to _hide_
Even if we posit some plug/socket/bonobo magic-inter-process-menu
handler.  The notion of an app hiding the desktop menubar seems like
a bad idea.