Re: OS's menu?

[Lundberg, Johannes]

Alright, thanks for the reply. So, basically Windows and OS X already supports it and Unity coming soon.

How about FreeBSD? Depends on the window manager I suppose but are there any options today?

Johannes Lundberg
BRILLIANTSERVICE CO., LTD.

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 6:10 PM, David Chisnall <David.Chisnall@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

On 31 Jul 2013, at 09:23, "Lundberg, Johannes" <johannes@brilliantservice.co.jp> wrote:

> Hi
>
> Are there any ongoing plans on change the default menus of GNUstep?
>
> I know there are work in progress to have GNUstep use Ubuntu's menu instead of having a floating menu on the desktop.
>
> Are there similar work in progress for making this happen on Windows and OS X?

The Windows theme will use in-window menus, drawn with the win32 APIs.  I don't know of anyone using GNUstep for GUI applications on OS X, but if you request the Mac interface theme then you get Mac-style menus for other GNUstep applications.  This is what I tend to use.  You can also select in-window menus if you prefer them.

> For me the floating menu is quite awkward and doesn't go well together with any modern OS of today. It takes up space on the desktop and won't let you maximize your window without hiding the menu.

Yes, the NeXT style menu performs very poorly in Fitts' Law analyses as well.

> Having GNUstep applications use the OS's menu would be a great improvement in my opinion. However, I suppose maintenance load would increase whenever there's a new version of the OS.

It depends on stable APIs.  These exist on Windows and they might eventually exist with Unity...

David