Re: GNOME Goal Proposal: Port to GMenu

[Bhaavan Merchant <bhaavanmerchant gmail com>]

GMenu is a very good idea. The menu system has remained stagnant since the early software design days, and has become archaic. There is ambiguity as to location of various options (read Preferences in Edit or Tools, Select in Edit or elsewhere), For a new user, this is an evil which can be done away with. The root cause of this is each app developer has a different opinion on this and develops accordingly. Having GMenu like system, will eventually transfer this problem to be handled by the Shell, and the shell will handle menus in a consistent manner as per agreed guidelines.

This reinforces the principle of gnome shell of providing a consistent interface across its applications.

Yes, porting all the applications to use gmenu will not be an easy task. as it will require app level redesign. But the redesign is minimal in nature and should be an affordable one. At the same time, even if a large chunk of apps wont change, atleast it should be a standard for future app designs, so that atleast the new applications do not still follow a real old technique established in early GUI days.

IMO, at a later stage this could be evolved into a HUD system, which will not only be content aware, but will display smart and relevant results. Again, the main reason being that what is not an apps main purpose, should be handled by the shell (whose main purpose is to provide a neat, elegant and consistent user experience). Even though not a direct part of gnome, many applications like libreoffice, inkscape, gimp, blender etc. IMHO are suffering from poor menu designs cause of constraints. Having them integrated through a gmenu, and to allow them the flexibility of a shell-takes-care system, will benefit all. Ofcourse, there may be tasks they would want to handle themselves, but the gmenu will be non-intrusive to that.

Regards,
Bhaavan