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

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

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.