Mac-style Menu Bar for GTK and Java/Swing applications!

[light-angel]

from a time now, i've been trying to install the mac-menu applet on ubuntu-feisty.
i've follow this guide to do it:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=532

The problem is that when i'm done and login again, i can't see the applet when i press add to menu button on the top panel.

i've had used this guide before and worked but now it doesn't.

There's something you might wanna know. when i first tried to install it i just went to the carpet where the files i used for the previus installation of other pc where and install all the debs that where there using the GDI package installer. After that, the menus where outside the windows it belongs to and stayed in the upper left corner of the desktop. After all that was when i decided to install it using the guide i put before.

[kankan]

I also used to have the menu bar outside the window in the top left corner of the screen. I compiled the gnome mac applet and moved the files in /usr/lib/bonobo/servers and /usr/lib/gnome-applets
as i reloged, the menu disapeared from the top left corner, and disapeared totally from all Nautilus windows ... don't know how to recover it !
any help would be appreciated
regards

[Dawudd]

EDIT: I've just found a very interesting discussion on the subject here: http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=1765. They don't reach any conclusions about bigger monitors.

And another very interesting document here: http://www.re-pdf.com/?f=761&x=2af8a...b539005f14ad30. It shows that increasing the distance to the target doesn't mean increasing the time to reach the target in a linear proportion and how proper mouse acceleration helps keeping things working in bigger screens.

Thank you for such an informative contribution to the discussion.

It depends of the monitor size. For those who have small sizes (12.1, 13.3, 14.1) it saves some space and is not so longer to use.
Btw, I agree that it isn't useful for big monitors with high resolutions (over 1280)

Do you have any actual evidence to back this up? I went back to Raskin’s discussion, which I have previously cited. He calculated that, for a 14-inch screen, where the average distance to the Macintosh menu is 80 mm, the time to traverse that distance is 256 ms, as opposed to 663 ms for a Windows menu. So, I wondered, how much bigger would the average distance have to be for Windows to win out? Well, since this is based on actual mathematics (and not speculation), all I had to do was a little algebra and find that the average distance to the menu would have to be 799.5 mm. That is, the distance to the top of the screen would have to be ten times greater. I know of no monitor on the market that fulfils this criterion.

Let’s also not forget two more reasons why reaching this limit is even more unlikely. First, as resolution increases, dpi usually increases far more than screen size. This means that objects need to be drawn bigger on the screen, and the default pointer speed needs to be increased, thus making increased resolution more of a moot point. Secondly, as sicofante pointed out, software acceleration of the pointer means that one can just “throw” the pointer to the top of the screen and get there even faster (whereas this acceleration would likely have a negative effect on Windows menu acquisition).

There are continuous debates over this. And both sides may be right. There is more than likely, more than one answer. You see Vista got rid of the menubar for this reason.If there is no menubar, there is nothing to miss.

Also, I've found that KDE devs don't look at patents very often.

Are you saying that, on Vista, you never have to point at anything? I like that they’re trying to get rid of the menubar and replace it with toolbars and tabbed toolbars (“ribbons”), but that doesn’t negate any argument in favour of putting these toolbars at the top of the screen instead (as I have already argued should be done anyway).

As for patents, the Apple Lisa was released in 1983. If a patent was issued, surely twenty years have passed since, and, thus, it must have expired by now. Can anyone point to a specific patent?

[sicofante]

software acceleration of the pointer means that one can just “throw” the pointer to the top of the screen and get there even faster (whereas this acceleration would likely have a negative effect on Windows menu acquisition).

Let me use this quote as an excuse to bring one reasoning in favor of windows-style menu bars (although all other points lead to mac-style).

If I remember correctly, in the IXDA discussion someone points out that coming back from the menu to the application window should be taken into account too. While the menu bar at the top has infinite height and mouse acceleration makes it easy to reach it, any other targets in the application (icons in tool bars, for instance) are just ordinary targets and become "far targets" when coming back from the menu bar if the monitor is big, the application is not covering the whole screen and the tool bars or tool pallettes are floating somewhere far from the top.

This is an interesting discussion indeed. Gnome is in a very good position to study and decide about it and I wish this hack would be considered by the official Gnome gurus.

OFF TOPIC: For those interested in user interaction design in open source software, I found a very interesing article yesterday: http://humanized.com/weblog/2007/10/05/make_oss_humane/
(If you feel like chatting about it, maybe we should open a new thread.)

[Frak]

Are you saying that, on Vista, you never have to point at anything? I like that they’re trying to get rid of the menubar and replace it with toolbars and tabbed toolbars (“ribbons”), but that doesn’t negate any argument in favour of putting these toolbars at the top of the screen instead (as I have already argued should be done anyway).

As for patents, the Apple Lisa was released in 1983. If a patent was issued, surely twenty years have passed since, and, thus, it must have expired by now. Can anyone point to a specific patent?

The Patent is owned by IBM until 2016.

And just because MS took them off for the ribbon because the ribbon is easier to hit, because it has a larger percentage of the screen to occupy.

Also, just because somebody makes a choice doesn't mean its a good one.

[sicofante]

The Patent is owned by IBM until 2016.

I would say that's good news. I can't see IBM enforcing patents against FLOSS these days. They're on our side, or so they say...

(I also must remind everyone that software patents have no effect in Europe.)

[zniavre]

hello
so many improvment since last year

i hope some of you could make a gutsy deb or beautifull how-to for gutsy

i tried yesterday to compile but it did not work at all

i m wondering why gnome does not work on this applet and if there is a schedule on official integration
.
so wait and see


thank you all

[Cwiiis]

There won't be any official integration of this patch because it's a very hacky way of doing it. To have mac-style menus needs app-level integration to work correctly in all cases, something that probably won't happen for a while yet...

I *may* package these for gutsy in the near future, if I do I'll post about it here.

[sicofante]

i m wondering why gnome does not work on this applet and if there is a schedule on official integration

There won't be any official integration of this patch because it's a very hacky way of doing it. To have mac-style menus needs app-level integration to work correctly in all cases, something that probably won't happen for a while yet...

I agree that this is hacky and it's not the right way, but I also agree that some official consideration should be made by the Gnome team. Where's the place to push for it? I'm ready for the battle (and most of all, I want to hear their "why-nots").

[ayoli]

I agree that this is hacky and it's not the right way, but I also agree that some official consideration should be made by the Gnome team. Where's the place to push for it? I'm ready for the battle (and most of all, I want to hear their "why-nots").

you may want to read the orignal bug posted by adq.