Re: Menu (Was: Re: Unimplemented AppKit classes)

[Stefan Urbanek]

On 2003-01-22 23:25:39 +0100 Adam Fedor <fedor@doc.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday, January 22, 2003, at 12:02 PM, Stefan Urbanek wrote:
(snip)
> > How difficult it should be to change gui that way, that we can have 'NSMenu' 
> > bundles with custom menu interface, so developers can create and user can chose 
> > what they like? Can something like that be achieved by using NSInterface 
> > functions? (loading of interface bundles)
> If you're just talking about a horizontal menu like the one you reference, it's 
> not that big a change. Someone sent in a patch awhile ago to change NSMenu to 
> allow this, but I never got all the bugs out (nor a copyright assignment) - 
> although there are issues of where to put top-level menu items (like Hide and 
> Quit).

This is the thing I wanted to talk about some time ago.

There are many 'menu items' that are the same for all aplications (like Hide 
and Quit). In addition, it can be desirable to have some additional 
functionality available to all applications, like there we already have the 
Memory panel. There can be many possibilities of application extensions besides 
debugging panels (i was thinking about application object browser...). Or what 
about 'save application state' for persistant applications? Many posibilities 
for another discussion about application extensions...

How to make them available? Solution: Common application menu provided by the 
library/framework.

Apple already has it, and there is [-NSApplication setAppleMenu:]. I do not 
think that the method name is appropriate and for gnustep purposes we should 
have another name insteadd of 'Apple Menu'. I would suggest 'Common Application 
Menu', or just 'Common Menu'. It should be a menu (an this is another point) 
where user can find all functions common to all applications, like Hide and 
Quit are.

From the UI designers point of view, he will just specify which menu entry is 
the common menu, like he has to specify which menu is Services or Windows menu.

> I think something like a 'Menu Bar' requires support from the window manager to 
> really work correctly.

I have seen that kde is using something like menu bars, but i never worked with 
it so long that get the 'feel' of it. As with many GNUstep features, I think, 
that we should give it a try, implement it and see how it works. Many gnustep 
features are kept back, just because the underlying layer is obsolete.

Stefan