Can't access menu items from the keyboard

[Rick Spencer]

Binary package hint: unity

Steps:

1. Run gedit
2. Create 2 files
3. Hit Alt and D

Expected, the Documents menu comes down
Observed, Nothing happens

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: unity 0.2.36-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-20.29-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-20-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Sep 12 17:38:17 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity

[Rick Spencer (rick-rickspencer3)]

This system is literally unusable to many people with keyboard access. Unity is for netbooks, which typically have hard to use trackpads instead of mice, so keyboard usage is important for every users. Finally, many of us have "hard-wired" keyboard behaviors that we use to accomplish things efficiently.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

Not sure if mutter is grabbing the keys or just unity doesn't handle it.
Confirmed it's not from appmenu as it works in the gnome panel with the applet.

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

This looks like an indicator-appmenu bug. Does this work with indicator-applet under GNOME?

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

bah, I'll learn to read comments before posting! I'm taking a look.

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

An update on this, Ted is going to add a signal to IndicatorObject that emits something like "open-menu" with the IndicatorEntry information. I'll add the code into Unity to listen to this and pop open the menu. The reason it doesn't currently work is that in Unity we don't use a GtkMenubar.

[Adam Guthrie (therigu)]

Is https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/630292 a duplicate of this issue?

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

From a UX perspective:

 * Alt should show the menu if it was hidden behind a window title, and
underline hot keys
 * Alt-F should drop the file menu from the panel, Alt-E the edit menu, etc
 * Repeating a tap of Alt should hide the menu behind the title again

Mark

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 0.2.40-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (0.2.40-0ubuntu1) maverick; urgency=low

  * New upstream release:
    - Fix inactive menus accessible (LP: #604505)
    - Fix some more memory leaks (LP: #604777, #621690, #628144)
    - Fix weird behaviors of quicklist (LP: #617339)
    - Provide an "open this folder" button (LP: #633201)
    - Hidden menu causing gap (LP: #600191)
    - Cannot go fullscreen for flash videos (LP: #631381)
    - Can't access menu items from the keyboard (LP: #636728)
    - Don't register for MDRAGs since they aren't used (LP: #632613)
    - Don't run indicator on special launchers (LP: #627488)
    - Center arrows position in folded launcher tiles (LP: #633084)
    - Launcher icons first appear as white upon login (LP: #601093)
    - Removes jittering when rubber band is in use on the launcher (LP: #632991)
    - Mutter restarts on closing almost any application (LP: #634701)
    - Can't launch apps like synaptic with root privileges from launch bar
      (LP: #599298)
    - Launcher tile dragging shouldn't be masked (LP: #631443)
    - Fix Carousel-ed icons have distorted perspective (LP: #607515)
    - Use no longer sync call (LP: #620011)
  * update debian/libunity0.symbols
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:02:54 +0200