vm team mailing list archive

[John Hein <xpqheqdvq4@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tim Cross wrote at 03:04 -0000 on Mar  2, 2011:
 > From what I've been able to determine, top-level menu 'buttons' will work
 > under wn32, X Lucid and I think GNUStep. They do not work under GTK+ or NS.
 > Don't know about other toolkits.
 > 
 > The difficulty about a modular approach so that we have different behavior
 > based on the toolkit is that I'm not sure how easily you can detect each
 > different toolkit at run-time. I'm also concerned we may be just adding
 > complexity and extra code (= extra bugs) for little real benefit. I'd rather
 > we had the same/consistent interface on all systems. Apart from less code to
 > maintain, it gives a consistent feel regardless of the build you are using.
 > This would mean not having top-level menu buttons as at least two toolkits
 > don't support it.  Personally, I think in the last 15 years, there has only
 > been one time I used the option to get the emacs menu bar, so maybe I'm not
 > able to see the real advantage of having the option as a top-level button
 > compared to having it as an action under a sub-menu.
 > 
 > Tim
 > 
 > P.S. Another thought may be to have this as a toolbar item? I personally
 > turn off toolbars, but maybe that would be a better solution as all toolkits
 > support toolbars and essentially, this is what a top-level menu button is.

Until I saw this bug discussion, I didn't know the problem existed.
Clearly I haven't tried to get at the emacs menubar in a long
time (vm-7.19? under emacs-?).

I can confirm on fedora 14 (emacs 23.2.1, gtk+ 2.21.4, vm 8.1.1) that
the [VM] menubar button doesn't change the menubar under gtk+ (have to
click a second time or escape to "release" the button press and then
nothing changes).  I had to use vm-menu-toggle-menubar to get back to
the vm menubar after using 'Switch to Emacs toolbar' under the help
menu (which really changes the menubar, not the toolbar).

I also typically disable toolbars, but the toolbar workaround and/or
submenus is okay with me (two clicks is not that much of an issue for
this - switching menubars is probably? not done that often).  There's
also always M-x vm-menu-toggle-menubar.  I tend to agree that making
it consistent across toolkits is better from a UI consistency point of
view (and probably simpler than trying to detect toolkits in vm code
and maintain an inventory of which ones work), but don't feel that
strongly.

Unless the vm top level menu button can be fixed in vm (from what's
been tried so far, it sounds like that's hard if not impossible),
trying to fix it in emacs/gtk is probably not a useful resolution of
this bug - even if it can be identified & fixed upstream quickly -
because of legacy versions of emacs in the wild with the bug.  Filing
an upstream bug is probably still a good idea.

-- 
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/605799

Title:
  Emacs menu doesn't come up right

Status in VM (View Mail) for Emacs:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  Working on Emacs 22 or 23 on MS Windows, If I pick Help -> Switch to
  Emacs toolbar, nothing happens.  Clicking somewhere on the menubar
  once more brings it up.

  Going from the Emacs menubar to the VM menubar works the same way.

  Is this an Emacs problem or something wrong with VM?