Re: Gimp-style menus

["Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" <famrom idecnet com>]

liam holoweb net (2001-04-15 at 1239.58 -0400):
> The problem is that there isn't a very strong visual affordance -- the
> dotted line at the top isn't a strong clue, I just thought it was a
> separator for decoration.

AAhaa, the problem is the clue.

> Please don't expect people to read the marketing-tip-of-the-day to
> work aruond UI deficiencies :-)

Do you mean that an over use of it, in stupid ways, has make people
ignore them? Sad, but probably true.

OTOH, there are some funny tutorials, like the one to make straight
lines, that I think people can read and realize there are ways to do
things. The idea is to eliminate the fear, so they experiment.

> Seriously, thuogh, the right mouse button menu is pervasive in Windows,
> was pervasive in open look (where the right mouse button, whichever
> button you configured that to be, had a label on it, on the mouse,
> saying "menu"), and Ithink it's a useful idiom.

I see four quick solutions while typing this: open the menu torn off
as default, add it to every image window (redundancy?), put in toolbox
(monster toolbox now, and where go the three old entries?) or change
the ">" to "Menu". Any more ideas?

> But you should be able to get to everything in annother, mouseless and
> visible way.  I do think the lack of a menubar in the gimp is not good;
> let people tear off the menu bar, gtk already has support for that.

It has support for it, if the coders do not remove it. If I have heard
right, some new apps do not allow to change keybindings like with
other GTK+ apps. I hope they fix that problem soon, cos sometimes you
need that feature.

BTW, is there a way to toggle a torn off menu into column mode (like
submenus)? Or the inverse (draw submenus horizontaly)?

GSR