GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 95733
Tools menu is initially blank
Last modified: 2005-12-14 17:37:26 UTC
When launching gedit 2.1.x for the first time, the tools menu has no items. When "Word count" (for example) is added to the tools menu via. the plugin manager, there is a separator at the top of the menu.
Paolo, though simple IMHO this is a major usability bug in the 2.1.x gedit series. I'm pumping severity up to "Normal" for this reason.
*** Bug 99957 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I think these are two different problems. The first one is due to gedit but I really don't know how to fix it in a sane way, i.e. I don't know how to tell libbonoboui to display the tool menu only when it is not empty (note that actually the menu it is never empty since it always contains placeholders) The second one is probably due to a libbonoboui bug: the "Wrod Count" (now Document Statistics) menu item is added to a placeholder having delimit="top" so the separator is automatically added by libbonoboui. Probably, libbonoboui should add the separator only when there is at least one visible menu item before.
So - there are several simple solutions for the first problem; a) merge the tools menu with hidden="1" and merge the other menus over the top with hidden="0"; b) Put something in the 'Tools' menu that's always there :-) c) Put a placeholder for Tools in the toplevel, but no menu - merge the menu in (all of) the plugins. The 2nd is more annoying - if this irritates you enough we need a libbonoboui patch to fix this - it sounds pretty tedious. One problem though is that there is no way to notify an item 'below' that something has been inserted above it. Of course for a placeholder's contents its different. Ultimately that code was not particularly designed for populating empty menus - hence it doesn't work so well :-)
*** Bug 101231 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Fixing this bug requires UI changes. Removing TARGET2.2.0 Set priority to NORMAL. I have still not found a simple way to fix this bug. About Michael's suggestions: a) doesn't work, b) No comment! c) Cannnot work with current plugin framework.
How about adding a menu item which is always present in Tools which takes the user to the plugins configuration dialog?
One problem is plugins can merge into other menus, such as the file menu.
*** Bug 129474 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 135103 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I dont think hiding the Tools menu is a good idea, having menus hide and reappear or move around is quite disconcerting and makes applications that little harder to learn. A menu item to open you up right on the the Plugins tab of the preferences dialog would be a good idea, as Malcolm suggested. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95733#c7 I think this would improve discoverability too (and is similar to what abiword and gnumeric have).
See also bug #151445
fixed with the GtkUIManager switch