joost witteveen wrote: > > It sounds like this can generate > > many possible trees that, while optimal, are very different depending on > > what's installed. Which means that a user who is familiar with the menus on > > one system might be completly lost on another. > > Well, the trees generated on my computer all very much look like each other. > But you are right, there are diffences. > > On the other hand, if we want to prevent that Apps/Editors on one > system has 20 entries, and on my system to only has 2 entries, > then I see no other way out than to re-shape the menu tree.
Well the alternative that has been brought up before is to make everything use a deeper tree (like Apps/Editors/Big/Emacsen), and have menu automatically collapse the tree to Apps/Editors on your system with 2 editors and keep the big tree on mine (that has every editor installed). The only differences between doing it this way and the hints way are that: 1. The hints way is a lot cooler conceptually. :-) 2. The collapsing tree way doesn't allow merging of menus like Apps/Sound and Apps/Viewers into Apps/Multimedia. 3. The collapsing tree way means that you always find stuff where you'd expect it, you just may not decend as deep in the hierarch as you expected to. #2 is a big drawback but at the same time makes things more consitent too, #3 is a big plus. Did you consider this alternate approach and if so, what did you find wrong with it? > > But maybe it really works out so this isn't a problem? > > Just the way I was thinking. > > Maybe it will turn out that for the first-time users, it's best > to use a fixed tree (hints_optimize=false). > But I have recieved quite a number of complaints about the enourmous > number of entries in some sections (usually at places where _my_ tree > is underpopulated), and I do want to be able to give a responce > to those people. > > Having said that, I do hope that eventually the `optimized' tree > is good enough also for beginners -- but that just remains to be seen. Ok, looking at how it actually works out seems like a good idea. -- see shy jo
