Re: My GWorkspace feature request

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

I don't wanted to jump into this discussion at first, but now the harm 
has been done...


Am Samstag, 21.06.03 um 17:49 Uhr schrieb Enrico Sersale:

> On 2003-06-21 18:05:23 +0300 Pete French <pete@twisted.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > > If they are provided at all, some developers will put features on 
> > > them that don't appear anywhere else, which effectively forces their 
> > > use.
> > Possibly. But restricting some people from doing something useful 
> > because
> > others will use it to do something dumb isnt really the answer.
> > > Context menus are wrong because they are inconsistent and hidden.  
> > > How would you rather empty your wastebasket?  Would you prefer to 
> > > have the menu entry in a place that you can remember, or put some 
> > > emptying tool
> > Its on the main Finder menu (I just looked) but in this case the
> > context menu is useful because I can pop it up without having the 
> > Finder
> > app active.
>
> Totally annoyed by this discussion I've removed the menues. It's on 
> cvs.

Sad to hear this. Please don't listen to the people that cry loudest. 
They don't necessarily have the right arguments, but mostly those are 
fanatic about something.

Computer interfaces evolve like every other thing in live. If context 
menus did not exist during the high times of NeXTSTEP doesn't mean they 
are a bad thing. Computer applications where simpler those days 
(according to the lower power of those ancient machines) and some stuff 
was *simply not invented*. Stopping the development at some point means 
stagnation. Or do you (MJRay) think that OpenStep would not have 
evolved in any way if it would not have been abandoned?

As for the context menu stuff:

Sure, if you take Windows as an example, I agree, here context menus 
are done wrong (like so many other things not to mention): some actions 
can only be executed through context menus.
But I don't take Windows as the only example. At home I use Mac OS X. 
Here context menus also exist. But every context menu command can be 
executed by using the regular menu. So Context menus are a nice way to 
speed things up: If you are an experienced user and you know what you 
are doing you simply control click (or right click if you own a two 
button mouse) at the object under the mouse and you are done. You'll 
don't need to go to the menu and navigate through submenus or the like. 
I don't always use context menus but they are a nice plus to have.

@MJRay:
I also don't think that we need to restrict developers from using 
context menus. If they are not implemented by GNUstep someone else will 
implement them on it's own. This happened in the old Mac OS 7.x days 
when some developers came up with their versions of context menus. This 
way it was worse because every app of that kind had its own way to 
invoke those context menus. If you like restrictions you are maybe 
wrong in the ObjC world. Go to Java, this is a sufficiently restricting 
language.

> Monday I'll release a new version with many changes (removed the 
> Backgrounder app, new threads based file operations system, many bugs 
> fixed in the Icons Viewer) and _without_ contestual menues.
> If somebody still wants to use them, can make a patch to distribute, 
> surreptitiously, between the heretics ;-)

greetings, Lars