sub standard gnome integration for menus

[KaiMartin]

Currently, the menus of PCB do not respect global gnome settings. This aplies in particular to

1) menus_have_icons"
"Whether menus may display an icon next to a menu entry."
PCB does not show icons next to an menu item.

2) user_can change_accels
"Whether the user can dynamically type a new accelerator when positioned over an active menuitem."
This is only honored for the current session. On restart PCB returns to its defalt accels.

[Felix Ruoff (felixruoff)]

1) I think, the reason for not showing these Icons is, that there are no icons. For the gnome-default entries (Save, Save as..., Open, Quit, ...) 'stock-items' could be used. For me, it semms difficult/impossible to use them in common with the user-editable menus (gpcb-menu.res).
I am thinking about (and did some programming-tests) a just partly user-editable menu. There will be some fixed menu-items (like Open, Save, Copy, Preferences...) and some user-editable. My intention is, to make disabled menu-items possible. I am going to discus this on the mailing-list, when I have done some more tests.

2) Didn't know about this gnome-feature - interesting! I think this can be implementated by using gtk_accel_map_load()/gtk_accel_map_save().

[Peter Clifton (pcjc2)]

If you start adding icons, remember that too much of a good thing can be bad...

A selection of icons for the most commonly used menu items is helpful. They provide a visual context with which the user can form muscle memory, even for the less used items.

If we add an icon for every single menu entry, the icons form a clutter and are harder to distinguish from each other.

[KaiMartin (kmk-familieknaak)]

Ack. Icons can highlight most often used items in a menu.

If I had to choose, I'd gladly take the ability to define accels the gnome way in the GUI and do without icons.

---<)kaimartin(>---