Re: Mac-style menus

[Aidan Cully <aidan kublai com>]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 03:23:40PM -0400, Matthew Berg wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Eric Gillespie, Jr. wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 12:49:58PM -0400,
> > Liam Quin <liam@holoweb.net> wrote:
> > > As for gnome, tear-off menus might be a way to combine the two
> > > interfaces, and if the window manager could combine the menu
> > > bar with the window's title bar, lots of people would love you
> > > for saving all that space.
> > 
> > Mac-style menus and toolbars *do* save lots of space. I don't
> > know whose hare-brained idea it was to have the menus and
> > toolbars duplicated in every single window, but i'm willing to
> > bet it was Microsoft.
> 
> Ahem. *climbs on soapbox*
> 
> What is the point in posting something with no content other than an
> insult towards those of us who prefer our menubars to be bound to specific
> windows?
> 
> I won't bother going through listing my reasons for this bias, as it is a
> *matter of personal preference*.

I've had this argument before in a number of different settings, and I
think I've yet to convince more than one person, but that's a different
matter...  My argument goes:  It's not *just* a matter of personal
preference.  Some functions belong to the application, and not just the
particular document (window) you're working with.  Sticking a global
'Quit' menu item under a window 'File' menu has bitten me more than
once.  Using 'sloppy-focus' *is* a problem with Mac menus...  I've
proposed (on other forums) having the global menu be a task list (for
programs that wanted to export menus in this fashion, especially apps
that work with more than one document at a time).  Click on the task's
name, and a submenu for that process is displayed, which contains all
application-level commands for the process (like 'Quit', 'New', 'Open'
and 'About').  (also solves the problem that a lot of Mac users have of
forgetting when they've accidentally left their application open, since
the task list is always there, and conspicuous.)

I've thought about this problem quite a bit before...  The way I see it
working with gnome would mean that it wouldn't *need* to be a window
manager problem, since client programs would *explicitely* connect to
the menu process, and only export global-level functions.  The per-
window menu would stay.

I haven't worked everything out with it...  And, of course, as many
people before me have *meant* to say, but never quite gotten to:  "I'd
like to see it happen, but I probably won't put any work into it."

--aidan