Re: [Fwd: Re: GNUstep and Linux Fund]

[Robert J. Slover]

On Nov 12, 2009, at 12:00 PM, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:

> On 12 Nov 2009, at 16:55, David Chisnall wrote:
>
> > On 12 Nov 2009, at 16:49, address@hidden wrote:
> >
> > > > This allows to display any menu (set via setMenu:) as the popup  
> > > > menu of
> > > > the view. It is up to the application programmer to use or ignore  
> > > > this
> > > > feature.
> > >
> > > Thanks for the explanation. I supposed so.
> > > So the issue is rather the default behavior;
> > > I would suggest rather do nothing on right mouse click,
> > > since that is how things work in all OSes I know of.
> > > (And the app menu is visible all the time anyway...)
> >
> > This might make sense if you are in using the Windows or Mac  
> > interface styles, but I don't really like it.
>
>
> I think only in windows style ... since the GNUstep behavior is  
> already the same as on a Mac.
>
> > Having the main menu a single click away without having to move the  
> > mouse is a good design from the point of view of usability.  A menu  
> > that appears where the mouse is beats both a menu attached to the  
> > window and a menu attached to the screen in Fitts' Law terms.
>
> Yes, the current behavior is a good thing.  I actually wouldn't want  
> it to change even when using the windows interface style, since I  
> can see no benefit to *not* providing any action in response to a  
> right mouse click.

I would also point out that it is frustrating when the context menu on  
an OS X application doesn't also contain all of the actions that make  
sense in that context, such as not providing a 'Services' menu item.   
There's nothing more frustrating than right-clicking and not finding  
the action you intended to use, then having to navigate to the menu  
bar to find it, especially on a large screen (or in my case, multi- 
screen) setup.  A corollary is that it is frustrating to find an  
action *only* in the context menu, which I have seen as well.  If all  
actions are available somewhere on the main menu or from an Inspector  
panel reachable from there, providing the main menu as a default makes  
perfect sense, and a custom context menu just becomes an optimization  
of that.

> > The difference on OS X is that most views tend to have some kind of  
> > context menu, while most in GNUstep apps don't.
>
> Yes ... it's up to the app programmer.
>
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