unity-design team mailing list archive

[Petko <pditchev@xxxxxxxxx>]

 Well let me do my recap :

1. There clearly are people that use menu functions often , cannot 
remember them all in shortcuts and would not find it easier to use the 
HUD for the job.
2. Well what do you know there's no second point.


My opinion :

(just a comment on the revolutionary change in menus and functions , and 
the deprecation of the super-mega-old-granddaddy-style menus)
1. The HUD is not very usable on a desktop. I use it in select cases 
only (I would maybe use it more on a laptop/netbook) . My main thought 
is that it will probably never replace the menus and/or their 
functionality (especially on a desktop). It's a nice addition , but it's 
just that - an additional tool . Why is all that :
A) It just doesn't give the user the chance to explore the whole app , 
to see all the features .
B) I don't imagine that in some moment in time all people of the earth 
will prefer using words rather than mouse clicks to execute a function .
C) If at some point there is some perfect AI algorithm implemented in 
the HUD that would be really nice , but in my experience it does not 
help me in any way to find a feature that I didn't know existed (this 
argument is clearly connected to the first , the addition is that the 
HUD doesn't find even synonyms to the desired function , so if I guessed 
it is there it still is hard to use it ) .
PS:what do you care how old something is if it works and there's not 
much better alternative. It's good to have a uniform place for the user 
to discover the functions , and that's still not the HUD , nor all the 
other implementations.
2. Using a blacklist is duct tape for something that needs to be fixed .

Solutions :
A) Let an app prompt Unity to draw it's menu separately on startup (or 
run-time) . With this in place apps can be modified to call said setting 
and voilà . As I think of it such a merge won't happen because Unity's 
overall goal is to force everyone to use the global menu and such a 
patch would give a back door.
B) An easier to implement , but ,as I said , bad solution would be to 
create a tool to edit DConf and use the existing blacklist setting .
C) The most Unity-friendly solution - make an indicator (practically a 
toggle button) that makes the menus always visible (no window title 
displayed ) .
Now here's when the "fun" starts - who will do it . The only realistic 
answer is - you , or other people with the same problem . You can find 
support (hopefully) from everyone involved (for B you wouldn't need as 
much of it) in maintaining the affected packages . But what I've found 
from a lot of bashing my head against the wall is that nothing will 
happen if you don't do most of the work . Nothing will happen from a 
mail discussion nor from posting a bug about it (at least not with a 
problem of this magnitude) .
Petko