Re: Item for TODO?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     I can configure a menu-item as a button in X, but if I do the
>     same on a tty it just presents me with a list of completions (of
>     top-level menu items).  ...  Thats not true. Text-only does not
>     mean "no mouse". The command tmm-menubar-mouse can be invoked by
>     clicking on on the menubar with the mouse.
>
> If mouse selection doesn't work right for a menu bar item that has
> no menu, then it's a bug.  Fixing it should be much easier than
> adding a separate tool bar.  Also, since it is a bug fix, it is ok
> to do it now.
>
> I still don't think that a tool bar would have any advantage over
> the menu bar, for a tty.

The difference between a toolbar and a menu is that the toolbar
contains immediate actions, only the most important ones.  The screen
real estate on a tty is limited: our current implementation of
keyboard menus is not really convenient for use with a mouse, but can
be configured to take away no space when not used.  Implementing a
toolbar would at least require short button names: I don't think that
we have them available in general.  Maybe one would need mouse-over
action that changes a button [Pre] to [Preview] or similar.
mouse-over action would also make possible having a menu just appear
when the mouse cursor is in the top tty row.

Anyway, there are a number of things that might be worth thinking
about, in particular in connection with mouse-over (and don't forget
that at the time frames we are talking of, we also might negotiate
mouse-over events with gpm and xterm people).

But that discussion is something for after the release, at best.  I
think it would take even too much time to agree on something
definitive for the TODO file.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum