It would be cool to see a mockup on how this could look in action.
I think it would be nice to be able to deempathize the shortcut part of a menu item a bit.

Attached a quick mockup.

Created attachment 149582 [details]
different colours for menu accellerators

I approve this message! ;)

I'm in general very loathe to accept anything that uses grayed-out text for 'better looks' - grayed-out text has a very clear meaning in our UI, and that is 'insensitive'

(In reply to comment #5)
> I'm in general very loathe to accept anything that uses grayed-out text for
> 'better looks' - grayed-out text has a very clear meaning in our UI, and that
> is 'insensitive'

It doesn't have to be grey, that depends on your theme, I don't see the problem with it if all the shortcuts are coloured the same.

> I don't see the problem

Right. Thats why I'm mentioning that I see the problem :-)

Please respond to the attached argument :)

"It doesn't have to be grey" sounds a bit like "let's pretend it's pink for now, but it will be grey in the real world".

I second Matthias point about it looking insensitive.

Show me a mockup that has insensitive menuitems and your fancy-colored accelerators, and lets me differentiate between the two. Preferable not a mockup in a dark theme, but something closer to the default gnome theme. Then we can talk...

Ok, it will take some time.

Christian: meh, you got me :P

Created attachment 149739 [details]
nautilus example for different colour

(In reply to comment #5)
> I'm in general very loathe to accept anything that uses grayed-out text for
> 'better looks' - grayed-out text has a very clear meaning in our UI, and that
> is 'insensitive'

Nautilus nowadays uses in its Icon View a different colour to show extra information for the files. I think this works pretty well in cases like this, where there are different types of information in the same place.

Well.. this is the same situation of menus, isn't it?

Just as a point of interest, there is a downstream project that it is interested in seeing this feature implemented:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/493762

Personally, I love comment #3's mockup.

(In reply to comment #5)
> I'm in general very loathe to accept anything that uses grayed-out text for
> 'better looks' - grayed-out text has a very clear meaning in our UI, and that
> is 'insensitive'

I find that thought a bit painful, actually, for the simple reason that grey text SHOULDN'T mean "insensitive" and continuing with that idea is going to create a lot of problems. For example, an insensitive widget with blue text becomes slightly desaturated blue. So, should everything that is sensitive be full bright colours?

I don't think it should be a concern, Matthias, since only the secondary text is grey here. The primary text is still happy looking, and that is where the user would be looking, especially with this change implemented.

This is bike-shedding, though. Sorry. If the usability issues are too extreme, a similar effect can be implemented by italicizing or shrinking (or both) the GtkAccelLabel :)

Either way, it should be stylable, but I agree with Comment 15 that we shouldn't be afraid of darker text as long as the PRIMARY function is still bright.

Thomas Wood implemented this for the moblin-gtk-engine. It doesn't look confusing to me. The difference bewteen disabled entries can be made bigger as it's not that great in this screenshot.

Attaching screenshot.

Created attachment 151627 [details]
accellabels in the moblin theme

Still looks confusing to me.
Anyway, the fact that this can be implemented in theme engines pretty much means that we can close this bug, I think.

Let's close this. Clearlooks and Moblin engines can now do this and was very easy to implement by engine writers.