[Qgis-developer] Better Menus for QGIS 1.0

[Tom Elwertowski]

Hello all,

Since there has been some positive and no negative reactions to the proposed menu reorganization, I am going to commit it in a few days.

Additional reading (references below) has uncovered the fact that there are some differences between GNOME and KDE regarding preferences and toolbar visibility menu items. QGIS currently follows KDE guidelines for preferences and GNOME guidelines for toolbar visibility.

The guideline differences are as follows:

KDE places toolbar visibility and preferences items on the Settings menu.

GNOME does not use a Settings menu and places file-based properties on the File menu (same as Mac), application-wide options at the bottom of the Edit menu (Mac uses the Application menu) and toolbar visibility items on the View menu (Mac uses the Window menu).

Windows guidelines also puts toolbar visibility items on the View menu. Application-wide options are at the bottom of the Tools menu (which we don't have) and no guidelines are provided for file-based properties.

Do we want to a) continue as is, b) completely follow one of GNOME or KDE, or c) use GNOME menus for GNOME and KDE menus for KDE?

Windows will have the same menu layout as X11. If we customize for GNOME and KDE, option a seems to most closely match Windows.

We are already using the QDialogButtonBox class which provides different button layouts for GNOME and KDE. However, I don't want to overly complicate things. I'm more of an X11 observer than an X11 users so I will let others decide whether we should have a single X11 menu layout or separate GNOME and KDE menu layouts.

If we go with full menu customization, the differences are:

Options (Preferences), Custom Crs
Gnome - bottom of Edit menu
Mac - Application menu (a Mac-only menu)
Kde, Win - Settings menu (Win should use Tools menu but we don't have one)

Project Properties
Gnome, Mac - File menu above print commands
Kde, Win - Settings menu

Toolbar visibility, Toggle full screen
Gnome, Win - View menu
Mac - Windows menu (a Mac-only menu)
Kde - Settings menu


References:
Apple HIG - The Menu Bar and Its Menus
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGMenus/chapter_17_section_4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000356-TPXREF103
Gnome HIG - Menus
http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/menus.html.en
KDE UIG - Menus
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/menus/index.html
Windows Vista User Experience - Guidelines - Commands - Menus - Standard Menus
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511502.aspx


Tom