GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 736415
Improve reference to appmenu
Last modified: 2015-01-28 16:57:35 UTC
It is not clear when the documentation refers to the appmenu or the menubar. It should be made clearer consistently throughout the docs. It may help to have a ▼ next to the menu gui tag like "Open <guiseq><gui style="menu">gedit ▼</gui><gui style="menuitem">Preferences</gui></guiseq>" instead of "Open <guiseq><gui style="menu">gedit</gui><gui style="menuitem">Preferences</gui></guiseq>" It may also help to change the wording a bit: for example, use "Open the <gui style="menuitem">Preferences</gui> from the <gui style="menu">gedit ▼</gui> menu in the top bar" instead of "Open <guiseq><gui style="menu">gedit ▼</gui><gui style="menuitem">Preferences</gui></guiseq>" See https://mail.gnome.org/archives/docs-feedback/2014-August/msg00008.html for the original bug report.
For applications, if they are used in non-GNOME environments (or if the separate app menu is otherwise disabled), the app menu will be merged with the application menubar, and there will be no downward arrow. This always makes sense when describing gnome-shell, however.
The general consensus at the docs hackfest in Cambridge seems to be to say "Open the <app> menu in the top bar and select <menuitem>.", which doesn't address the problem of the app menu not existing on other desktops, but would improve the docs for GNOME.