Too much empty space at the right side of the indicator-applet drop-down menu

[Ricardo Pérez López]

Binary package hint: indicator-session

Now on Maverick, when I click on the 'power' icon button at the top-right corner of the screen, its drop-down menu has too much empty (and useless) space at the right side. The reason is obviously the existence of the 'Lock screen' hot key (Ctrl+Alt+L), which occupies the right side, moving all the menu items to the left side of the menu.

I attach an screenshot to illustrate the issue.

[Vish (vish)]

The presence of the shortcut-key for lock screen, on the right, makes the menu wide.
Not sure why the shortcut is shown there in maverick. It wasnt present in Lucid.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

the reason might be the long 'restart to complete update' so that the
session menu remain uniform.

2010/9/12 Vish <email address hidden>

> The presence of the shortcut-key for lock screen, on the right, makes the
> menu wide.
> Not sure why the shortcut is shown there in maverick. It wasnt present in
> Lucid.
>
> ** Changed in: indicator-session (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Low
>
> ** Changed in: indicator-session (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Confirmed
>
> --
> Too much empty space at the right side of the indicator-applet drop-down
> menu
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/635803
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to
> indicator-session in ubuntu.
>
> Status in “indicator-session” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: indicator-session
>
> Now on Maverick, when I click on the 'power' icon button at the top-right
> corner of the screen, its drop-down menu has too much empty (and useless)
> space at the right side. The reason is obviously the existence of the 'Lock
> screen' hot key (Ctrl+Alt+L), which occupies the right side, moving all the
> menu items to the left side of the menu.
>
> I attach an screenshot to illustrate the issue.
>
>
>

[Vish (vish)]

> Omer Akram wrote:
> the reason might be the long 'restart to complete update' so that the
> session menu remain uniform.

Oh! Really? How come the menu becomes even wider when "Restart to complete update" item is present..

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

MPT would know if its intended or a bug. subscribed MPT

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

This is not a bug in the session menu. It is a bug in GTK, or more precisely, a lack of sophistication in the way GTK lays out menus.

It is bad for the horizontal area used to display keyboard combos to overlap a lot with the horizontal area used for the item text, because this makes it harder to scan both the items and the combos. You can see this for example in OpenOffice.org Writer's "Insert" menu (screenshot attached): it's difficult to see that the "Comment" item has a keyboard combo, because it's smothered by the longer "Cross-reference..." item immediately above it.

Native GTK menus go to an extreme length to make sure this never happens: all menu item labels, and all keyboard combos in that menu, occupy completely separate columns, with space between the columns. Unfortunately, this makes some menus very wide. The session menu is just one example of this. For an even worse example, see Evolution's "Search" menu: the "Clear" item label is miles away from its Shift+Ctrl+B keyboard combo, because the combo is trying to keep clear of the much longer "Create Search Folder From Search..." item further down the menu. <http://lwn.net/images/ns/mua/evolution/searching.png> And that really isn't necessary.

Native Windows and Mac OS X menus take a more sophisticated approach. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but they seem to allow a *small* amount of overlap between text and combos in adjacent items
<http://www.betalogue.com/2004/02/25/non-breaking-space-keyboard-shortcut-in-indesign-cs/>
<http://sierramousetrap.org/smmug/20100405-meeting/demo_discussion/shortcuts/menuShortcuts.png>
and a much greater overlap between text and combos in non-adjacent items.
<http://0.tqn.com/d/graphicssoft/1/0/c/C/1/psc5-016.gif>
<http://etutorials.org/shared/images/tutorials/tutorial_42/54084xfg0107.jpg>
<http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim//2010/08/18/KeyboardShortcuts3.png?>
I think GTK should do the same.

[Vish (vish)]

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME .
Once submitted upstream , do report back here with the upstream bug number.Thanks in advance!

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

@Matthew, excellent analysis.

Meanwhile, I propose to hide the shortcut-key from the menu and show
it using the tooltip, for instance.

[Vish (vish)]

mpt, while this is a known issue in gtk, do we really expect this to be changed in gtk+ any time soon?
Why have the accel keys displayed in the first place? Seemed fine in Lucid without the combo keys shown.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The purpose of showing keyboard equivalents in this menu is exactly the same as the purpose of showing keyboard equivalents in any other menu: so that people know what they are. Hiding the keyboard equivalents here (or, even worse, showing them as a tooltip) wouldn't fix the bug in any of the other menus where it occurs. And it's not sensible to pick and choose whether to show a keyboard equivalent for an item based on how wide the menu's other items happen to be in English.

[yurik81 (yurik81)]

Very sad, previous menu was better.