Menubar in Workspace 4.8

[Martin Gräßlin]

On Sunday 25 September 2011 17:36:45 Alex Fiestas wrote:
> Hi there again!
> 
> So, while configuring the desktop shell to my taste, I realized how much I 
> missed the global Menubar,  so I thought on bringing the topic to the list.
> 
> Again guys, remember that I'm no usability expert or designer, just somebody 
> giving feedback, so please if I'm saying bullshit don't be rude with me :)
> 
> My idea on this will be to move the Menubar to the Titlebar, replacing the 
> application icon (which I didn't know it had a menu until today).
With Titlebar I assume you mean the window decoration and you want to have something like [1]
> 
> Personally I'd like to introduce a top panel but of course that would be a 
> major change,
Top panel has a hughe disadvantage in a multi screen setup. This is very easy to notice if you use Mac OS X or Unity.
> so imho moving the Menubar to the Titlebar is a good step, since 
> it remove comlexity from the window, and in theory Menubar should be used only 
> for "Options you don't use everyday" right?
There are a few points to it and we already had some discussions in the kwin mailinglist and there is already a review 
request for it [2]. I am not sure what the current state of the project is. There are a few problems with it:
* we cannot provide a generic solution without breaking the decoration ABI
* license of required Canonical library is incompatible with license used by decoration API (GPLv3-only + Copyright 
Assignment (personal notice: I rather reinvent the wheel in chinese wall style than contributing to a GPLv3 only + CA 
library) vs BSD)
* taking the horizontal menu and turning it vertical will only work in 9/10 cases. You would need a proper replacement 
menu like Dolphin does
* there can be real issues with it. Thomas has investigated about it.
* non-trivial if we consider window tabbing functionality
* Nuno was unhappy with just turning the icon as the menu. This needs real help from designers
* It needs Qt 4.8. Currently we still depend on Qt 4.7 and I don't know whether Qt 4.8 will become a requirement for KDE 
4.8.

Short summary: I don't think this is something which we can provide for 4.8 but if we decide we want to have it can be 
ready for 4.9. I think we have a sprint planned where we can define what we want ;-) If we need something in KDEUI 
we would even have to wait for Frameworks 5.

Cheers
Martin

[1] http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2011/03/menu-button-inside-window-decorations/
[2] https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/101162/
> 
> So, what do you think?
> 
> Cheers!
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