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

[Charles Philip Chan]

On 2006-09-04 13:01:33 -0400 Andrew Sveikauskas 
<a.l.sveikauskas@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

True.

> So, my thinking was, why not offer a few NSUserDefaults to appease B 
> above? 
> This would include:

Agreed.

> 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 will need to fake a main window when no documents are opened to do 
that.

> 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.

The problem with this is that it will increase screen clutter.

> 3. An option to not show the app icon.

Agreed.

> 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.

Things will improve once "WildMenus" and theming is integrated into 
GUI.

> 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.

Agreed, KDE does that and it is very nice. IMHO, there should some 
predefined themes that fixs in with the underlying system.

Charles

-- 
"Never make any mistaeks."
(Anonymous, in a mail discussion about to a kernel bug report.)

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