Re: Top menubar for applications

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 19:41 -0300, theblues gnr wrote:
> I know this has been discussed (flamewars actually) many times, 

Then, by all means, please read (again) the archives and understand the
technical issues that makes this request so flame-generating.

> Unfortunately I'm not able to hack this myself (yet! I'm 
> learning), so I was wondering why it hasn't been done yet: is it because 
> it's too hard with gtk+ or it's just that someone hasn't stepped up yet.

First technical reason is: the panel is already heavily used by applets
and the like; how would you place the application's menus without
disrupting the previous contents of the panel?

Second technical reason: even if you could make this option magically
appear, every application should be ported to it.  Gtk doesn't have the
slightest idea of what a "panel" is, so you should put the "top-level
menu" code inside a library higher on the dependency stack; but there
are many applications out there just using Gtk: how would they work?
How would they know that their menu should be placed inside "something"?
How would you bind the events generated by this "top-level" menu to the
actual application that handles them?  And we are just talking of Gtk;
what about applications wrote using the Qt libraries?  Or Motif?

Third technical reason: MacOS has just one workspace, Gnome does have
multiple workspaces; what policy should be created for workspace
switching?  That is: if I switch a workspace, what menubar should be
displayed?

There are more reasons, but I repeat: go read the archives, and
understand why you can't just code something like this without either
patching every existing application, or getting an incoherent look -
which is what a "top-level menu" should avoid in the first place.

This is Gnome; the fact that some UI and HIG principles resemble Aqua or
any other Apple interface is just a symptom that those principles are
useful and following them is The Right Thing To Do(tm).  Gnome isn't
Aqua, though - so if you really like the "top-level menu thingie", then
buy an Apple[1].

+++

[1] Which is good for your health, even if it comes from a tree and not
from Cupertino, CA[2].

[2] "Here at Gnome we value your health.  So, eat apples and remember:
smart kids don't use drugs".

Regards,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi - <ebassi gmail com>
Log: http://log.emmanuelebassi.net