Task title: Theme and UI consistency testing for mac-style menu bars in gnome.

Benefits: There are existing patches to allow GNOME to use mac-style menu bars, we'd like to use them however they need extensive testing for consistency. The advantages of these menu bars will become apparent to the student during the course of the exercise.

Requirements: Able to install a linux distribution, a good eye for detail

Task description Consists of: A bug has been developing on GNOME bugzilla regarding utilising mac-style menu bars in GNOME. What is required is a participant to test lots of GNOME themes with the appropriate patches applied and check for relevant inconsistencies and create a list of known issues across various themes. A good eye for detail is required to identify even a few pixels of improper rendering.

results should include testing the following; * It must be tested on a range of themes including the gnome default (or any historically default themes) * menu accelerators must still be functional (e.g. alt+e), testing may require testing on a range of themes * does the menu respond when the cursor is above the menu item but at the very top of the screen, with all tested themes? * does the menu resemble identically the appearance of other panel menu's (e.g. Places/System) in all tested themes?

A concise list of theme/usability issues should be provided, the issues can be presented however the participant wishes.

Extra: Extra stuff that's also helpful. Test lots of applications to see what is broken, and find a pattern for the breakages. Review the code for the patches and ascertain the following; * is there a GConf key to turn it on/off, and has a patch been written to tie this into the new gnome control center appearance configuration, which also applies to trunk? * does it currently work against trunk (SVN)?

If you're feeling brave and clever track down any rendering bugs discovered in the initial stages of the issue and propose a method of fixing them, patch, recommendation, identification of the location of the problem, any of the above.

Links: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=353076 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_menu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts_law

Estimated time: This task should take about 5 days, the extra stuff probably another 5 and would require learning some C, which I will be happy to teach.

Primary contact: Karl Lattimer <lattimerk@googlemail.com>

One can use the GNOME Developer Kit [1], but then may need to do some extra work to get various themes installed. Fedora or Ubuntu will be easier in that regard. Student needs to compile Gtk+ with the patch.

[1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeDeveloperKit

Hi!

I would like to claim this issue, I sent you an E-mail with some details.

If you didnt recieve it for some reason, I can be contacted through: zoasterboy@msn.com

Just a quick comment: Menu accelerators do not work at all.

zoasterboy: as long nobody has added an explicit "I claim this task" comment here the task will remain unclaimed and open.

Wow, this is an awesome task! This is one of the things that has really been annoying me ever since I switched to Linux.

My knowledge on how gtk runs apps is somewhat limited, but isn't it designed to run multiple copies of a program whereas os x is designed to run one copy of an app?

Anyway, good luck zoasterboy!

I claim this task

zoasterboy, welcome on board!

Thanks for the info/encouragement people!

I'll get working on this right away.

wiki page at ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/global_menu

Project site here: http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/

What is the status of the testing/report?

Would someone help me to test this?( if it compiles and works)

http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/svn/branches/_0.3/

both the gtk2-aqd patch and the applet is rewritten. Still not ready for release, but I want to see if things are fine enough to go on.

In this version, the menubars and the applet use a protocol(based on XClientMessage) to communicate with each other, instead of using wnck's events.

It is an effort to make the patch less like a hacking by removing dependence of higher level objects(eg, a toplevel GtkWindow) in GtkMenuBar.

Introducing a protocol allow us to retreive and allocate the menubar's size from within the applet.

These are supposed to be functional: * menu accelerators still be functional (e.g. alt+e) * the menu respond when the cursor is above the menu item but at the very top of the screen

Works for me :)

I have not set menu transparency, but the rest is definitely working :)

System: Linux wolverine 2.6.23-gentoo-r4 #1 SMP Sun Dec 16 17:31:58 EET 2007 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5600 @ 1.83GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

x11-libs/gtk+-2.12.1-r2 gnome-base/gnome-panel-2.20.2

I can provide ebuilds here, if anyone interested in them. I have 2 of them: - gnome-extra/gnome2-globalmenu-applet - svn trunk; - x11-libs/gtk+ - slightly modified 2.12.1-r2 ebuild with patch from svn.

Hi, thank you for your comments, sstasyuk

Would you come to maintain the ebuild package and put it to the project website? If you want, send me an email (my account @gmail.com will be fine) to tell me.

If bugs are seeked and fixed, the 0.3 svn branch will changes and we'll need to repackage it for different platforms.

I am maintaining the Fedora packages, pierre.slamich is working on the ubuntu packages. If you can provide a guide and some packages for Gentoo, we'll have packages for 3 major distributions! It will be a very helpful platform to do further work, and also a plus for our effort to enter gtk releases.

I am also glad to announce here:

Release Notes

Gnome2-globalmenu 0.3 is ready. Completely new patch/code for gtkmenubar. Reconstructed menu server.

New features:

* + Stupid Menu Bar Scrolling
* - No Window icon
* + Skinning(partially working)
* + New Protocol: Connectionless, Asynchronous(Should update the Specification)
* + True Server/Client Architecture
* + Stablility
* + Menu server auto detection
* + Auto Guessing whether the menubar is a global one instead of hard coded

window names.

http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/svn/branches/0.3/

Would somebody update the test cases regarding to the project's roadmap?

http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/wiki/DevelopmentHome

The importance of testing the behavior of various gtk programs increases, since it will lead us to the list of the programs that we will patch in version 0.5, where our design become very robust and we can begin to give up GtkMenuBar but turn to patching applications to work with GtkGlobalMenuBar.

Comment deleted

It seems that globalmenu doesn't work with SWT. At least it doesn't work with eclipse.

Does not work with eclipse means that menubar is not shown neither in globalmenu-applet nor in eclipse window.

Swing menu was not caught (tested with freemind), it resides on its common place. But I do not know exactly how it draws its menus.

SWT works in the latest svn, After I fixed a bug with TuxGuitar(another SWT application, bug much smaller than Eclipse)

Let me install a freehand(if I can find) to test. anyway, I think SWING don't use GTK at all so we can't really deal with it.

Oh, I see. But seems trunk should be merged with 0.3. I'll recheck it tomorrow and move discussion to bugtracker if issue would still exists.

Sorry there have been no updates, I've been busy, I'll continue working on this as soon as possible.

No Problem :-) First some stati: - Thunderbird works (at least at ubuntu 7.10 and your svn 324. - Gimp troubles: in dialog-boxes menu disappears. seems like gimp uses even for dialog-boxes real windows or that - i haven't looked at the code so far. - java swing doesn't use GTK at all

and for your information KDE has the option for a global menu (at least last time I cared for KDE - what was ages before :-) ), maybe talking to KDE-guys would be interesting, and getting together freedesktop.org convinced :)

thanks for the good work!

Hi lars, what does 'in dialog-boxes menu' means? would you submit a screenshot so that I can find out what really happens and locate the problems?

What he meant by 'in dialog-boxes':

I've noticed this also. When using Gimp as you probably already know, more than one window is opened rather than a single window (one for the toolbox, various pictures, etc). When opening a new image with another image already open, sometimes the menu options disappear for the new image until you click away and back again.

I'll include a screen shot when I finish the report.

Dear zoasterboy,

gnome2-globalmenu 0.3 svn323 is ready and includes new features as well as bug fixes.

New features:

* + Users can custom the appearance.
* + New deploying script reduces difficulty for building from scratch. (Hopefully

will also reduce packaging difficulty.)

Downloading from svn is prefered. svn checkout http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/tags/0.3_323 gnome2-globalmenu

A installation guide for building the svn is at http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/wiki/BuildFromScratch

I strongly suggest you try to build from the source and test this new svn version.

but, RPM download is also available at http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/files/gtk2-aqd-0.3.svn323.2.12.5-1.fc8.i386.rpm http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/files/gnome2-globalmenu-applet-0.3.323-4.fc8.i386.rpm

Packages for other platform will come later when we have time to make it.

can someone enlighten me about the status of this task? lattimerk? the deadline for any tasks is february 3rd. is this still "claimed" or is it somehow "resolved"? lattimerk: if so, feel free to correct its status.

andre: I think that this task needs restarting and the information provided as asked, testing of the current latest SVN/CVS rather than ubuntu packaged version, against a recent version of GNOME, e.g. Garnome 2.21.90?

Once data has been collected about the active, current status of the project we can then submit comment back to the original authors with the aim to include it as an option in future releases.

Is anybody interested in testing gnome-globalmenu-0.4?

rainwoodman, isn't it simply the trunk?

Yes the trunk changed from 0.3 to 0.4. It was a big change.

FYI: the active trunk has been updated to 0.7 branch. http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

It is not hackish anymore and has many more features listed here: http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/wiki/QuickTour

Interesting to see and quite impressive. Thanks for keeping us updated here about the progress. :)