Re: My GWorkspace feature request

[Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf]

On 21.06.2003 13:13:10 MJ Ray wrote:
>Philippe C.D. Robert <probert@sgi.com> wrote:
>> I do not ignore anything, I just fail to understand your reasoning. As 
we
>> discuss contextual menus I am not talking about invisible global 
(sub)menus or
>> whatever you are referring to.
>
>You do pointedly ignore it.  Context menus are invisible menus with
>shifting geography and will always be unavoidably slower to use than
>the main ones.
>
>> [...] All I am saying is that with contextual menus > you can provide
>functionality specific to the object you point at right at the > moment.
>
>The object you point at, or the object you selected?  If you are going to
>have context menus, you have to deal with things like that too and will
>probably always confuse people.

the object you point at will get selected by right/control clicking at it. 
everything else is silly.

>
>[...]
>> And yes, there is a gain here, because it accelerates the process of
>> interacting with the application. I am not talking about simple apps 
here,
>> I am talking about apps having a lot of menu entries, think of 
something in
>> the size of Photoshop and you will see that using too many inspectors 
and
>> deep menu structures is not (always) the way to go.
>
>A non-simple application is an application with a bad interface.  Context

how about app with 200+ menu entries? with submenus of submenus of 
submenus?

what about Maya? Maya has not only extensive use of context menus, it also 
has them aranged around the selected object because the possible actions 
are so manyfold.

>menus slow the user interaction by making the user hunt for the "right"
>thing that has the menu with the option that they want.  Any application
>which has them is probably already not simple enough.
>
>I haven't used Photoshop for a long time.  Apart from the context menus
>and GTK+ sillinesses, GIMP appears to be a reasonable attempt at a user
>interface for a graphics package, with its panels and so on.

You really *can't* compare the Gimp with Photoshop. It must be a long time 
you used Photoshop.

>
>[...]
>>> Are you saying that you want items on the pop-up menu that are not on 
the
>>> global menu?  That would be Evil, Bad and Wrong, as well as 
inconsistent.
>> Yes I am, or at least not in the same structure. And it would not be 
Evil,
>> Bad, Wrong or inconsistent, it would/can be a useful addition to a gui 
if
>> used properly. This includes that such menus are part of the gui 
guidelines
>> so that users are familiar with the concept.
>
>This is EBW.  A GNUstep virtue is that the main menu is consistent and
>comprehensive.  That must not be sacrificed, regardless of what happens
>to the UI guide.
>
>OK, who's paying you to screw GNUstep's interface over?  Are we finally
>worrying the other desktops?  ;-)

Lars