[openbox] Menu behaviour

[tim hall]

Daniel Teichert wrote:
> And I heard tim hall exclaim:
> 
>>The one thing I'm not so happy with is the menu behavior, some of my 
>>sub-menus are rather long (I like them that way) and subsequently they jump 
>>around annoyingly on my screen. Is it possible, dare I say it, to get them to 
> 
> 
> Did you by any chance get any solutions to this off-list, or did I maybe
> miss a response? 

No, the only response was from Mikael to say, basically it can't be done
unless you or I want to code it (give me a couple of years to learn C &
I'll think about it).

> The default Debian menus have this problem with a
> vengeance if you have any number of packages installed (I know I could
> redo them so it didn't happen but that would be both an initial and a
> maintenance pain). It really is very difficult to navigate---depending
> on where an item is in the menu I may just open an xterm and run it
> 'by hand' rather than try to get to it in the menus... Out of
> curiosity, why was this behavior adopted? I assume it was deliberate and
> with good reason since it's a variation from what seems to be the 'norm'
> in most blackbox-like window managers...

I'm glad to know it's not just me then :) Perhaps it's worth a well
worded FR and hope that someone finds it an interesting problem one day.

> I also hasten to add that other than this feature I love openbox and
> think it's one of the greatest things since sliced bread ;). I'm hoping
> there's an answer to your question so I can push it up even past the
> 'sliced bread' mark ;).

I agree, I wouldn't bother to go on about it if openbox didn't rock in
pretty much every other respect. My current best workaround, following
some of the suggestions on this list is to use fbpanel to launch often
used applications and give me a visual reference for icons and using
keybindings to run scripts and change desktops using a W-F1[-F4]
combination, because uh, I'm used to that sort of thing.

What would be useful is if one could make mouse & keybindings within the 
context of the menu, this would help with accessibility features too.
Currently the mouse scroll button selects menu items - it would be great
to be able to scroll the menu. It would also be nice to have some
softcoded controls on menu behaviour. I trust that the current menu
behaviour was a deliberately introduced feature. It does kind of work
now the cursor jumps around with it, but on a small screen with long
Debian menus it can become monitor defenestratingly annoying :)

I have looked at the standard methods for further dividing the sub-menus 
into sub-menus and frankly, they both suck. Either you have to edit 
/etc/menu-methods/translate_menus eveytime you install new packages or 
you use the menu optimization method, which gives you dynamic menus, I 
don't actually want a further layer of sub-menus. Granted, this isn't an 
openbox issue, however, how it handles the display of such menus - is.

Obviously, I haven't even looked at the code and I have no idea how much
work that would entail. I do know that it would make a couple of Debian
users Gushingly happy! !-) It's not my intention to spam this list on
this subject, so any comments on how I can make this kind of request
more constructively will be gratefully received.

And thanks for the work you've all put in to make openbox as great as it
is. Really.

tim hall