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Bug 93506 - Cannot add menu items to menus which don't contain launchers
Cannot add menu items to menus which don't contain launchers
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gnome-panel
Classification: Other
Component: panel
2.3.x
Other All
: High major
: ---
Assigned To: Panel Maintainers
Panel Maintainers
AP4
: 73741 97970 99110 139870 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 162009
 
 
Reported: 2002-09-17 17:50 UTC by John Sheehan
Modified: 2020-11-06 20:26 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description John Sheehan 2002-09-17 17:50:08 UTC
Right clicking on a submenu in the Applications menu or Gnome menu
has no effect.

Right clicking on a menu item (other than a submenu) in the Applications
menu or GNOME menu provides a pop-up menu with the following items:

  Add this launcher to panel
  Remove this item
  Put into Run dialog
  Properties
  Entire Menu --> Add this as Drawer to panel
                  Add this as menu to panel
                  Add new item to this menu
                  Properties

This means that :
  - you can't add a launcher to an empty menu (since you can't enter menu)
  - if a menu only contains submenus, you cannot add a launcher 
    to the menu.
  - you can only add a menu as a drawer or a menu to a panel if
    the menu contains at least one launcher

This would be solved, by allowing right-clicking on the menu name
which gives the popup:
     Add this as Drawer to panel
     Add this as menu to panel
     Add new item to this menu
     Properties

and by removing the item 'entire menu' from the popup for menu items
other than submenus.  It also clarifies to which menu/item the two
'properties' pertain

The only downside of this might be that you now cannot add a launcher
to the top-level Applications Menu - unless you allow right-clicking
on the Applications button itself. The user would be able to do this
anyway through the Gnome menu since Applications is submenu of Gnome 
menu.
Comment 1 Calum Benson 2002-09-17 18:36:38 UTC
Another proposal which gets rid of the horrid "Entire Menu"
monstrosity altogether (HIG doesn't approve of submenus on popup
menus) and lets you add stuff to the Applications menu in the same way
as any other might be:

For launcher L on menu M:

	Run
	---
	Properties
	Remove
	---
	Help on <L> **
	---
	Add New Item to <M>...
	---
	Add <L> to panel
	Add <M> as drawer to panel*
	Add <M> as menu to panel


For submenu <S> on menu <M>:

	Properties
	Remove
	---
	Add New item to <S>... ***
	Add New item to <M>...
	---
	Add <S> as menu to panel
	Add <S> as drawer to panel*
	---
	Add <M> as menu to panel
	Add <M> as drawer to panel*


Might also be nice to have an "Edit.." item on both menus that just
plonked you into the appropriate menu-editing Nautilus view.

* Do we really need to keep the 'add as drawers' items?  Does anyone
use them?  Would make these menus look much nicer if we could get rid
of them :)

** I'd be tempted to get rid of this one too, who needs help on an
application they haven't run yet?

*** Perhaps, although maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to make people
open the submenu they want to add things to before we let them add
things to it.
Comment 2 John Sheehan 2002-09-18 09:16:53 UTC
>        Add New item to <S>... ***
>
>*** Perhaps, although maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to make people
>              open the submenu they want to add things to before we
>              let them add things to it.

Have to be able to add to an empty menu !

Other issues for consideration:

   - If a menu is added to the panel, there has to be a way to
     change its icon.  The current 'entire menu' approach allows
     for this for non-empty menus (though it doesn't currently work
     and it's non-intuitive to have to drop 3 levels of menus to
     change the icon at the top).  Putting back a 'properties' in
     right-click of a panel menu icon would address this.

   - If a menu is added to the panel, there has to be a way to add
     new icons to it.  Again the 'entire menu' approach allows for
     this for non-empty menus.

   - I don't believe you should be allowed to remove submenus if you
     can't add submenus.  Better to leave this for within Nautilus ?


Comment 3 John Sheehan 2002-09-18 09:42:57 UTC
In response to part of my previous comment: Who needs panel menus ?

I can't create a menu on the panel.  The only way to do this is
copy an existing menu/submenu to the panel as a menu and then
edit its icon and contents.  But editing a panel menu applies
the same changes to the menu from which it is derived (actually
it's worse than that - right clicking on the panel menu icon and 
changing the icon, changes the icon of the submenu from which it 
was derived, but not the icon of the panel menu !)

Allowing a user to copy menus to the panel misleads a user.  Only 
after editing it, will they discover they modified the source menu.

Since drawers can be created from scratch, or created from submenus,
and can be tailored without affecting the menu/drawer from which
they may have originated, what is the value of any menu other than
the Applications Menu (and the Gnome Menu) ?


Comment 4 Calum Benson 2002-09-18 11:34:45 UTC
> Have to be able to add to an empty menu !

Hmm, I guess so, although the fact that empty menus appear at all (at
least system-created ones) is pretty unpleasant and oft-complained about.

> I don't believe you should be allowed to remove submenus if you
> can't add submenus.  Better to leave this for within Nautilus ?

True, that's a bit of an oversight (in my proposal, at least)... I
don't see why you shouldn't be able to add submenus the same way as
you can add launchers, if you want to.

You're right about being able to create menus too... this is kind of
pointless/dangerous the way things work right now, it would probably
be better to remove those options.

Comment 5 Luis Villa 2002-11-19 16:00:03 UTC
Mark? Any word on this one?
Comment 6 Luis Villa 2002-11-22 16:02:41 UTC
*** Bug 73741 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Mark Finlay 2002-11-22 18:56:59 UTC
> Might also be nice to have an "Edit.." item on both menus that just
> plonked you into the appropriate menu-editing Nautilus view.

Definately!

however, I think that "Browse..." might be more accurate as it would
be opened in nautilus and not a specific menu editing app.

Once we have a Browse or Edit item and have bug #92719 fixed we could 
nuke start-here :)
Comment 8 Mark Finlay 2002-11-22 18:58:16 UTC
*** Bug 99110 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 Calum Benson 2003-08-07 16:12:47 UTC
Apologies for spam... marking as GNOMEVER2.3 so it appears on the official GNOME
bug list :)
Comment 10 Calum Benson 2003-11-25 17:30:37 UTC
All gone a bit quiet on this one... ping?
Comment 11 Vincent Untz 2003-11-26 16:38:34 UTC
I tried to work on this, but I had this problem: once a submenu is
open, the click event (or whatever it is, maybe button-press) doesn't
work for the submenu item. Is it a known problem with GTK+ or was my
code simply badly written?

I could see the context menu for the submenu item work if I
right-clicked quick enough, before the submenu opens.
Comment 12 Vincent Untz 2003-12-02 15:07:20 UTC
*** Bug 97970 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Mark McLoughlin 2004-04-14 16:57:42 UTC
*** Bug 139870 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 14 Bryan W Clark 2004-08-10 23:16:13 UTC
Seems like this has died once again.

Vincent, perhaps attaching your patches to this bug will at least give a
collection of what you have done.  Maybe someone else will pick it up if you
haven't already finished it, which you probably have ;-)
Comment 15 Vincent Untz 2004-08-16 09:54:50 UTC
Hum... I think I lost the patches when I did some 'rm -rf' magic :-(
But IIRC, there is a patch in another bug implementing that. Will need to look
for that when I'll have more time.
Comment 16 Calum Benson 2004-10-21 16:50:07 UTC
Apologies for spam-- ensuring Sun a11y team are cc'ed on all current a11y bugs.
 Filter on "SUN A11Y SPAM" to ignore.
Comment 17 David William Price 2005-03-14 18:04:51 UTC
This is a dupe of 82241 and the other "gnome menuing system sucks" bugs only
82241 is properly listed as enhancement. All these dupe'd menu editing bugs
should be collected and considered as a GUI issue for 2.12.
Comment 18 Matt Keenan (IRC:MattMan) 2006-03-21 14:03:31 UTC
just wondering is there any activity on this ?
Comment 19 Vincent Untz 2006-03-22 07:26:13 UTC
Well, the original bug is fixed since we don't add menu items this way anymore. However, the other comments are about the right-click menus. Some work should be done here, but basically, GTK+ doesn't help us here (popup menus on menu items are not really usual).
Comment 20 Calum Benson 2006-04-26 17:08:54 UTC
Apologies for spam... ensuring Sun a11y folks are cc'ed on all current accessibility bugs.
Comment 21 André Klapper 2020-11-06 20:26:01 UTC
bugzilla.gnome.org is being replaced by gitlab.gnome.org. We are closing all old bug reports in Bugzilla which have not seen updates for many years.

If you can still reproduce this issue in a currently supported version of GNOME (currently that would be 3.38), then please feel free to report it at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-panel/-/issues/

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry it could not be fixed.