Re: GNOME panel "menu" applet

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

Windows NT has separate user and system menu heirachies, but integrates
them.  So, if there is an applications menu in both system and user
heirachies, they will be placed in the same menu with a separator between
them.  Something like this:
                        +--------------+
                        | user items   |
     +----------------+ +--------------+
     | Programs     > | | system items |
     |                | +--------------+

Most NT applications will install their menu items under the system
heirachy, where they can't be edited by users.  A default user menu is
created the first time they log in, which contains some of the more often
used items such as the file manager, terminal window and a few other small
programs -- things the user is most likely to want to change.

This system works quite well.

Another option would be to use a system a bit like something I heard about
in hurd.  They have the ability to in effect mount one directory over the
top of another, so if a file is not found in one directory, it is checked
for in the other directory.  When you write new files, they are written
to the first directory.

Maybe it would be worth implementing something like this for the panel
menus.  It would give the user the freedom to edit their menus as much as
they want, without problems.

To make sys administration easier, it would be possible to use three
heirachies -- one which takes precedence over the user menus, so you could
lock certain menu items, such as log out.

Of course, most of these suggestions lead to more stat calls, which would
slow the menus down further, without more memory intensive caching.

James.

--
Email: james@daa.com.au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/


On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Derek Simkowiak wrote:

> > So, why don't we do it something like this:
> [...]
> 	These are some good ideas.  Are you going to be the one to
> implement these changes?  What's your take on this, Miguel?  
> 
> 	I would like to know how MS-Windows NT handles the user/system
> split (if it does at all), and how KDE stores menu information.