Re: gnome canvas and gtk menu questions

[John Heidemann <johnh isi edu>]

On 20 Jun 2003 14:56:34 EDT, "John (J5) Palmieri" wrote: 
>
>> >> Any suggestions about how to change the color of a single menu item?
>> >> Is this a style/theming problem?  (I want to control just one menu
>> >> entry.  I'm happy to let theming work for all the other parts of the
>> >> menu.)
>> >
>> >	So what color do you want to set it to ? what if the theme uses that
>> >color for the background ? will a different coloured menu give the user
>> >the heebie jeebies - given that no other app does this sort of evilness
>> >;-)
>> 
>> In general, I would agree with you.  But this app has a very specific
>> reason to do this: when you click on a blob, it represents a process
>> on your system, and you get a menu that lets you send signals to the
>> process.  That process has a color, keyed to the name of the process.
>> The menu needs to have visual feedback to indicate that it's working
>> on the process you want, not something else.
>> 
>> But don't take my word for it, download the Tcl/Tk lavaps code or RPM
>> from my web page and try it out.
>> 
>
>How about this suggestion.  Instead of changing the colors of the menu
>items, change the icon.  You can place icons next to menu items and
>icons are usualy more eyecatching then coloring the fonts.  This allows
>you to keep the items legible no matter what theme is used.  If you also
>wish to have seperate icons for each menu item you can create a series
>of colored icons based on the base icon.  Or to make things easy (and
>you're not artisticly inclined) you can use a set of one type of icon,
>such as translucent colored spheres.    

Yes, I've thought about that as an alternative.  Two downsides: I'd have to
generate the icons on the fly, and icons aren't as big as the whole
menu item.

I'd have to generate icons on the fly because the color is
algorithmically generated to anywhere in the RGB space.  It's not just
a few discrete colors that for which I can have precomputed icons.

Icons also are pretty small (about as high as the text and square).
I'd prefer to color the whole width of the menu.

(Of course, what would be really cool would be to match the process to
its icon in the file system/menu.  But doing that without the support
of the application seems like a non-starter.)

Another option, can I replace the text of the menu with an image?
That solves the width problem.  I'd guess if I have to access
GTK_BIN(menu_item)->child, I can probably replace it as well, if I
have to.

   -John Heidemann