Re: Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers]

[Nicolas Roard]

On 9/4/06, Charles Philip Chan <cpchan@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> On 2006-09-04 13:01:33 -0400 Andrew Sveikauskas
> <a.l.sveikauskas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > So, it seems the situation is like this:
> >   * Faction A loves GNUstep for its NeXT goodness
> >   * Faction B thinks GNUstep is out of place and should play nice
> > with other
> > desktops.
> >   * Probably some people believe both are true.
>
> True.

Indeed. The classic fraction between people that want a NeXT-like
desktop (created via GNUstep apps) and people that simply want to use
Foundation/AppKit/Gorm/Renaissance to program applications that will
run on something else (KDE/GNOME/Windows/OS X)

And some would like both...

> > So, my thinking was, why not offer a few NSUserDefaults to appease B
> > above?
> > This would include:
>
> Agreed.
>
> > 1. An option to have NSMenus appear within a window.  It would mix
> > better
> > with an existing X or Win32 desktop and would also help solve the
> > "GNUstep
> > doesn't work with focus follows mouse" problem.
>
> We will need to fake a main window when no documents are opened to do
> that.

The menu question is a bit more complex than that, but afaik Michael
Hanni had a proof of concept at one point of horizontal menu "in"
windows (ala windows). Something horrendous from an HCI point of view,
but alas the default on windows/kde/gnome.

> > 2. An option that makes all NSPanels visible regardless of what
> > application
> > has focus.  This would solve the other half of the "GNUstep doesn't
> > work with
> > focus follows mouse" problem.
>
> The problem with this is that it will increase screen clutter.

There's no free meal... at least you can easily argue that there won't
be more screen clutter than your host environment usually have ;-)
Of course, it's a loss coming from a NeXT desktop, but hey, your choice.

> > 3. An option to not show the app icon.
>
> Agreed.

We already have that.

> > These three options alone would probably make some people complain
> > less.  But
> > then I realized that, options to tweak the UI already exist, yet
> > people still
> > complain about the "lack" of Mac-like menus, etc.  Maybe said people
> > do not
> > read documentation, or maybe they are not well documented, but, it
> > does raise
> > an important point: there needs to be a very clear, intuitive,
> > idiot-proof
> > way for new users to change UI styles.
>
> Things will improve once "WildMenus" and theming is integrated into
> GUI.

"WildMenus" is already integrated since a few months.
Theming, ah well.. it's on the way...

> > So my thought was very simple.  It might be nice if gnustep-gui, upon
> > running
> > an application for the first time, popped up a panel that asked the
> > user what
> > kind of interface style they would want.  There they could click away
> > (select
> > NeXT Mac or Win style menus, don't display the app icon, etc.)
> > instead of
> > being completely turned off by a program that doesn't fit their WM or
> > desktop.
>
> Agreed, KDE does that and it is very nice. IMHO, there should some
> predefined themes that fixs in with the underlying system.

Agree, it's a good idea. We could simply have a general default for
setting the kind of expected UI. Ah well, we already have it:
NSInterfaceStyle.

Ok to be fair we don't do much with it ;-)

--
Nicolas Roard
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly
by." -- Douglas Adams