shared menus

Matthew Woehlke mw_triad at users.sourceforge.net
Thu May 21 21:37:13 CEST 2009


Maciej Pilichowski wrote:
> On Thursday 21 May 2009 18:23:52 Matthew Woehlke wrote:
>> I turned off shared menu for TAI container; shared menu (for TAI)
>> has two effects:
>> - menu might be above tab strip instead of below
> 
> It was intended :-)

...but shared menu is not needed for this.

>> - menus can't appear in child windows (e.g. if child is a
>> container)
> 
> Only if child is TAI as well. If it is GAI this sentence is not true.

It is as of my last rewording of the section. Otherwise you have magic 
appearing/disappearing menus, depending on what window has focus. If 
you've got a solution to that, I'm all ears, but for now my preference 
is that the menu is displayed in the topmost window that wants to 
display it. (IOW if you disable shared menus everywhere /except/ the 
desktop... then you only ever get one menu, in the desktop.)

>> The second I think is undesirable as default. 
> 
> I made this on on one purpose only -- the most recognizable app in KDE 
> world TAI-like is Konqueror. Konq. has shared menu. 

I am confused. "Menus can't appear in child windows" happens when you 
have nested containers. I don't see how the Konqueror example is relevant.

>> This brings up an important question, however; when using shared
>> menu, what do you do if the app /has/ no menu? I'm not sure hiding
>> it is good because then the layout potentially changes when you
>> switch windows. Should we have some sort of "empty menu" that would
>> be used if the child doesn't provide a menu?
> 
> Yes. I would opt for creating menu "close" on-fly in case of 
> empty-menu. Or even with help menu as well. After all, space is 
> already taken, why not use it?

The alternative is to hide the menu, but then you have magic 
disappearing menu. I think we are agreeing we don't like this :-).

(Actually you can't have help - at least, I don't think so, right now 
anyway - if app doesn't provide it, but of course now you have less 
incentive to ever not have a menu ;-). I wonder if this will lead to 
"optional" menus, as in, "show this stuff if a container wants a menu, 
but don't show a menu in this window".)

>> Also... I'm debating turning on shared menus by default for /GAI/.
>> What do you think?
> 
> I put this off because KDE by default doesn't use shared menu. So -- 
> backward compatibility.

Okay.

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
This is not a sig. I am too lazy to steal one, perhaps you could loan me 
yours? -- Unknown



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