GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 572634
Z-Snake Menus
Last modified: 2014-04-05 17:01:51 UTC
This is an concept, I have first seen in BeOS. It connects submenus so that it is easier for the user to see the connection between the menu and the submenu. I'd like to se this in gtk applications. BeOS Screenshots: http://www.osnews.com/img/632/zsnake.png http://qube.ru/files/images/skrinshot_beos_dano_na_macintosh_zsnake.gif
Created attachment 129205 [details] Z-Snake
This feature is certainly not possible with current GKT+ api. I'm not sure we would even want to add such a feature any way because it looks fairly ugly. It would also probably require a single window for multiple pop-up menus to be implemented in a sane way, which is not a nice thought either.
Lets discuss a bit what would be neccessary to implement this: * Each of the menu windows would need to be larger by the "snake" width on the left and right side. * The menu windows need an input shape, so the area is not sensitive in any way. * The theme engine would need enough information to draw this kind of design All of these three points would need support in GTK+ itself ... The first two could be handled with a style property. However, I am not sure how the information could be passed to the engine. In this case it may really be the easiest thing to draw the menu background, including the selected menuitem (and the z-snake) at the same time. So the engine would get the following information on the menu background drawing: - size of the menu (there anyways) - position of the selected menuitem, if there is one - position of the selected menuitem in the submenu, if there is a submenu This assumes there is a single call into the theme engine two draw both the menu+selected item. If this is not the case, an extra drawing call for the connection would be needed, I guess.
How much of this is possible with GTK 3.0?
This project is not under active development anymore (except for buildtools, the last 'real' code change happened in October 2010). According to developers, it is currently unlikely that there will be any further active development. Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this bug report in the future if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again.