menus do not appear in the menu bar

[Donald Pellegrino]

Menus for the GParted user interface running under Unity are not affected by the system's Appearance settings for Behavior, Show the menus for a window, In the menu bar. Instead the menus appear within the main GParted window frame above the application's tool bar.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: gparted 0.25.0-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-24.43-generic 4.4.10
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-24-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sat Jun 18 20:43:11 2016
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gparted
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Jan Claeys (janc)]

That is because GParted is running as root and as such has no access to the service that shows menus outside the application. The same happens when you run other GUI applications as root or as another user than the desktop user (e.g. Synaptic).

[Donald Pellegrino (donald-a-pellegrino)]

Thanks for the explanation @janc. This creates an inconsistency for the user experience in Unity. Since this is a systematic issue affecting all applications run as a different user than the desktop user, it seems more appropriate to file this bug under the unity package.

[Donald Pellegrino (donald-a-pellegrino)]

It seems that Java applications represent another class of applications exhibiting the behavior described in this bug. See Bug #1596369 for details on the Java case.

[Donald Pellegrino (donald-a-pellegrino)]

The unity "System Settings," "Appearance," "Behavior," "Show the menus for a window" setting takes two options: "In the menu bar" or "In the window's title bar." Wolfram Mathematica, GNU Emacs, Java applications, and possibly others display menus under the window's title bar in the traditional way. This happens regardless of the value of "Show the menus for a window." In addition, applications run as a different user than the desktop user are also unable to render menus as per the setting.

The unity interface does not have an option to show menus under the window's title bar. Therefore, it is impossible to maintain a consistent user experience. Menus cannot be shown in the same location
for all applications.

If moving the menu bar is a goal, then one way to approach the problem might be to use separate bugs for each widget toolkit, application, and type of use. For example:

* Bug #1596369 for Java applications using Swing
* Bug for Wolfram Mathematica. May not be fixable if application code must be changed.
* Bug for GNU/Emacs
* Bug for running applications as a another user than the desktop user

It would also be useful to provide users an option for the traditional behavior:

* Bug to add "Below the window's title bar" to the Appearance system settings.

[Manuelbascoy (manuelbascoy)]

Try "sudo gparted", and the menu bar will appear!