Re: NSMenu* and NSPopuUp* issues

[Fred Kiefer]

Hi Serg,

I was away for two weeks so I did miss out on the whole discussion on
the removal of horizontal menus. But I must say, that I am shoked by the
way this was handled by you.
There have been a few objections (e.g. by Alex Perez and Josh 
Rendlesham) raised against the decision to remove horizontal menus and 
against your own statement you still did apply this change.

Serg Stoyan wrote:
 >>> Currently I'm working on fixing as much as possible NSMenu* and
 >>> NSPopUp* related problems and bugs. I've found semi-working
 >>> horizontal menus code. I've search through mail list archive and
 >>> found discussions about horizontal menus. As a result of this
 >>> discussion was:
 >>>
 >>> 1. Doesn't add horizontal menus into GNUstep library. 2. If
 >>> someone needs this, reach this feature by making theme bundle.
 >>> (example:
 >>> http://w1.423.telia.com/~u42308495/alex/sillytheme-0.0.tar.gz)
 >>>
 >>> So, finally, we have to decide: Do we need horizontal menus in
 >>> GNUstep library or not? There is 2 ways:
 >>>
 >>> 1. We decide to leave horizontal menus -- I'll finish
 >>> implementation. 2. We decide to remove -- I'll remove horizontal
 >>> menus code.
 >>
 >> I do not care either way.  But if you want to implement horizontal
 >> menus I really would opt for splitting the NSMenuView class into
 >> two different classes.  (See my posts in reply to Fred Kiefer.) The
 >> current NSMenuView class is a total mess because it tries to do 3
 >> things at the same time: Vertical, popup and horizontal.
 >
 > Personally, I don't like having horizontal menus. The main reason is
 > what you said: mess in GNUstep menu code. It's hard to maintain and
 > really noone badly need this. I've not seen any contructive
 > objections against removing this code from GNUstep. So I'll remove
 > it.

If you did not regard those objections as "constructive" you should 
explain why this is the case. Not just ignore them. This may give the 
impression that you regard any deviating view as non-constructive.

In another mail you want to establish youself as the class maintainer
for the NSMenu class cluster. With your curent attitude towards opposing
positions, I would strongly by against such a step.


Now to the real question at hand.
In the discussion of the horizontal menu issue to seperate items have 
been mixed:
1) The technical support for horizontal menu views.
2) User interface policies using horizontal menus.

Of course the later is only possible given the former, but the opposit
is not necessarily true. I think most people in the GNUstep community
don't want to use a user interface with horizontal menus ourself. Still
I cannot think of any reason to oppose the posibility of such an
interface or of the many other uses a horizontal menu view could be
brought to. So instead of discussing the later we should only talk about
the support for horizontal menus in GUI.

So what was the problem with the current code here? As your reasoning is 
not that explicit I have to come up with my own:

1) The class is deprecated in MacOSX and does not exist in OpenStep.

This is perhaps a reason to drop the whole class, but not for any 
specific change.

2) GNUstep is currently not using this feature.

True, but there is a lot more in the source where the same is true and 
we wont remove this. And when we will be implementing other user 
interface policies we will need it (Although I wont use this). And also 
there may already be people out there using it.

3) This feature bloats up the code of NSMenuView.

I don't think this was true. There were about six places in the file 
where the horizontal property was used just to do either one or the 
other value computation. If such simple code is to hard to maintain, we 
really should give up on GUI.

4) It was broken anyway. ("Semi-working" in your words)

So which part was working and what did break the other part? I once did 
use horizontal menus myself, just for funs sake and fixed them at that 
time. If they were broken again this would be enought reason to fix this 
not to remove it.

5) The same can be achieved in a bundle anyway.

I did not test this, but it surely is true. But having to support an 
extra bundle to just save some odd twenty lines of code in NSMenuView 
looks strange to me. We will deviate from a documented (although 
deprecated) interface and point people to a seperate bundle? And the 
method setHorizontal: wont be possible this way.

6) It will come back as soon as Wims changes to split up NSMenuView get 
applied.

Sorry I don't get this. Will we have this code than or not? Vertical and 
horizontal menus behave just the same. The only difference is in the 
appearance. The next step in this logic would be to supply separate 
classes for vertical and horizontal NSScroller or even for NSCell with 
or without a border. This is possible and may be appropriate in some 
cases, but I don't see it in this.

7) I don't like horizontal menus.

Ok, this is the only reason I cannot argue with. You have all the right 
in the world to think so, but this does not allow you to remove this 
code. Please remember that for some time this was part of the offical 
interface of MacOSX and GNUstep. We allways claim that we want to do 
things better than Apple. What they get blaimed for is that they keep on 
chaning the interface all the time. We should not follow them in this. 
Especially not when it is just a question of taste.

BTW. you also did break the comaptibility of the encoding/decoding code. 
I am not sure if this gets used for the popup, otherwise this wont do a 
harm.


While I am still upset, there is one other issue I have to set straight:
I am in favour of splitting up a subclass of NSMenuView for popup 
buttons. Here the actual behaviour is different and very specific. We 
also will need a subclass of NSMenu and NSMenuItemCell to support this.
But what I don't see the need for is horizontal menu. What I did oppose 
also was the introduction of the NSMenuView protocol as this only make 
things harder to understand. We don't need this and there is no reason 
for it at all.

To finish off more positive: Apart from this change I like the progress 
of the menu cluster and anyway I would prefer to spend my time 
programming instead of writing long mails.

Cheers
Fred