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Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers]
From: |
Richard Frith-Macdonald |
Subject: |
Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers] |
Date: |
Mon, 4 Sep 2006 19:08:35 +0100 |
On 4 Sep 2006, at 18:01, Andrew Sveikauskas wrote:
http://www120.pair.com/mccarthy/nextstep/intro.htmld/
After reading this something occured to me. NeXTstep is very nice,
and via GNUstep I am well used to the way they do things. But a
large quantity of people (most?) who are newly exposed to GNUstep
are not looking to replace NeXTstep. This is probably what leads
people to periodically complain on the mailing list.
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.
So, my thinking was, why not offer a few NSUserDefaults to appease
B above? This would include:
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 want that coded as part of theming ... but it's non-trivial and
nobody has contributed the code to do it yet.
Really it ought to be possible to add it as part of the existing
window decoration view (which allows the gui to draw window
decorations rather than the window manager), but the existing bugs in
the window frame coordinate handling ought to be fixed first as they
will effect it. I'd gladly help/advise anyone who has time to take
that task on.
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.
Easy to implement. Perhaps a GSDisableHideOnDeactivate user default?
3. An option to not show the app icon.
I think the GSSuppressAppIcon user default already does this.
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.
I am hoping that the theming work will bring this about ... any
decent theming mechanism needs very simple change of theme on the
fly, easy development of new themes, and a set of nice themes to
select from.
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.
Good idea ... we already do something like that when using the ms-
windows backend.
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], (continued)
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Pete French, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Sašo Kiselkov, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Marc Brünink, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Charles Philip Chan, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Andrew Sveikauskas, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Charles Philip Chan, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Andrew Sveikauskas, 2006/09/04
- Re: Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Nicolas Roard, 2006/09/04
- Re: Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], phil taylor, 2006/09/05
- Re: Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Charles Philip Chan, 2006/09/05
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers],
Richard Frith-Macdonald <=
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], phil taylor, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Charles Philip Chan, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], phil taylor, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Chris Vetter, 2006/09/05
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], phil taylor, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Yen-Ju Chen, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Helge Hess, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], phil taylor, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Helge Hess, 2006/09/04
- Re: scrollbars [was: Re: really attracting developers], Andrew Ruder, 2006/09/04