unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Chad M. Germann wrote on 01/02/13 22:15:
> ...
> 
>> I disagree, though it's a polite disagreement. :-) But even if
>> Mark was right, that wouldn't help the millions using Ubuntu
>> 11.10, 12.04 LTS, 12.10, or 13.04. And most Ubuntu applications
>> -- even most default applications -- are developed primarily for
>> HUD-less platforms, so it will be a challenge to get their
>> developers interested.
> 
> I have put thought on this one Ubuntu has a rather large market
> share for a desktop Un*x-like system sadly, this could be used to
> force applications developers to adapt to unity and brake
> compatibility with more traditional systems ie. (Foo)Box, FVWM,
> KDE, Trinity, Mate, Mint's cinnamon.

It's not either/or. For example, Firefox and Chrome+Chromium show a
normal set of menus (and therefore integrate with the HUD) when
running on Ubuntu, whereas on other Linux OSes they show just a
menubutton like on Windows. And some smaller apps, like Polly and
Kazam, target Ubuntu specifically while also working on other
platforms. (Polly in particular will soon have menus on Ubuntu that
keep working regardless of which window is focused.)

But designing for multiple platforms is more work. And for those
developers who want to target just one PC Linux platform, it can be
challenging to persuade them that targeting the vast majority of those
users is the best use of their time. Sometimes they work for a company
that makes a competing OS. And sometimes they're just hacking for fun
and don't care about number of users at all.

> I would caution that Ubuntu should be humble and try its best to
> make it's HUD work with applications. not make applications adapt
> to HUD.

As Mark said, we have done. Just to get the menu bar working with
Ubuntu's default applications, Ubuntu developers have had to hook it
up five times: for GTK, for Qt, for XUL (Firefox and Thunderbird), for
VCL (LibreOffice), and most recently for GtkApplication.

That has taken a couple of years. It was a lot of work -- part of the
cost of toolkit proliferation -- but it meant the HUD itself needed
implementing only once on top.

Now, just making menus searchable for every application is relatively
easy. (Mac OS X has been doing that since way back in 2007.) The hard
part is where we ask application developers to go beyond that -- to
implement a HUD-specific interface, on top of their primary interface.

> As far as this menu problem if no one is working on it after I am
> done with BCT and AIT I will start hacking on the problem myself.
> 
> In the mean time can anyone drop me a hint on were I can find the 
> Documentation for the Unity Panel's code base?   Never too early
> to start studying that and it gives me something to wheel about in
> my head.

Many codebases combine to form the menu bar.
<https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-menu-bar>

The part that shows the window menus is called indicator-appmenu.
<https://code.launchpad.net/indicator-appmenu>

You can ask in the #ubuntu-unity channel if you need help with the code.

Cheers
- -- 
mpt

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