GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 521131
Merge gnome panel and window decorator, reimplement standard window components and decorations as panel applets.
Last modified: 2008-05-01 09:18:17 UTC
This idea may require a lot of rewritten code; I'm aware of that. I wouldn't be submitting this if I did not believe it was completely worth doing. I originally posted this idea on Ubuntu brainstorm, and I'll put the link to it here as well. I would appreciate it if any deficiencies in the way I have presented it were overlooked. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3583/ I feel that if there is one aspect of this idea I present well in that brainstorm thread, in the original idea and my comments after it, it is the possibilities of such a system.
I was told by AqD, the author of the gtk mac global menu hack, that this is impractical to do in gnome. I'm also told that is not the case with KDE, however, the KDE folks don't seem to get it. Let me provide some contrast for this idea: Why don't we just make every app draw its own title bar too? It'd be less code for you to worry about right? Bad idea? _why_ is that a bad idea? (...because this here is a good idea for most of the same reasons.) When a function is common among more than X% of applications, it needs to be passed down into common procedure. Menu bars fit that description. ...as do tab bars, main toolbars, status bars, and location bars. Do we make every app draw its own widgets? Not really, no. We have gtk. What good does that do us? Theming. Reduced redundant code to maintain. Decreased memory usage. Extra flexibility. Streamlined graphical application production. I feel this idea of mine will bring us even more of those benefits, by not requiring every app to /place/ it's own components. It makes me sad that the first app I ever saw that blurred these archaic lines was Microsoft Office 2007, and that they brutally pathetic method to do it.
...they \used such a/ brutally... (I wish firefox could check grammar instead of just spelling... sorry about that)
This would be a good idea for a time when you throw immediate practicality out the window. I'm thinking gnome 3.0. ...Amaranth, I see you.