Improve Gimp window interaction

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This is more of an enhancement than a defect. 

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Open Gimp
2. Click on any other gimp window besides the main one
3. To get access to the menu, you have to click on the main window again

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
If possible, the menu shouldn't go away when clicking on gimp dialog windows.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Globalmenu 0.7.2; Ubuntu 8.10

Please provide any additional information below.
In Gimp, when working in one of its other windows (e.g. the tools dialog
box), the user has to click on the main gimp window to get access to the menu.

It would be much better if the menu could somehow stay in the panel even
when the user is working in the other gimp windows. That way, click are not
wasted and workflow is smooth.

When more than one image is open the menu should "stay" on the last 'image'
window that was selected.

It would be great if this could be implemented.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by azaid...@gmail.com on 28 Jan 2009 at 12:10

[GoogleCodeExporter]

GIMP is a bit strange when it comes to windows and toolboxes. In current gimp
versions it looks like the main window is not the main toolbox anymore but 
somehow it
still is.

Isn't there a window style for toolboxes in gnome/metacity?

Gimp only has a menu in the main toolbar and the image window. Other windows 
like
undocked dialogs (i.e. layers) are normal windows without a menu

In my opinion toolboxes should not get the full focus (globalmenu perspective), 
but
that comes down to the question above. As long as the applications or window 
managers
do not handle those boxes differently this might be tricky.

Similar discussion was about preference windows that show in the switcher as
seperated windows. It would be nicer if the preferences window would minimize 
with
the main window. same for toolboxes.

I think one needs to know 2 things:
- Is the window a toolbar?
- Which windows belong together, or which is the parent?

Original comment by mfl...@gmail.com on 28 Jan 2009 at 2:38

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Someome has recently filed this in the GNOMe bugtracker as well, but the 
reporter of
the bug does not know how globalmenu is supposed to be used by programs - it's
basically a "it doesn't work"-style report.

Maybe someone here can describe what applications have to do in order to set a 
global
menu?

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=593062

Original comment by schum...@gmx.de on 31 Aug 2009 at 9:02

[GoogleCodeExporter]

@Comment1:

The behavior is not well defined from the Global Menu's side. Although GIMP 
knows on
which document window the toolboxes are operating, global menu doesn't know 
anything
about it.

What I would suggest to do is to patch GIMP so that the toolboxes's 
transient_for
window is always properly set to the window of the document at which it is 
targeting,
which is kind of useful mis-use of the transient_for property.

On the globalmenu applet side, we can add a patch to monitor this transient_for
property and (re)-follow the parent window's menu when the property is changed.

@Comment2:
the current global menu is coded in such a way that applications do not need to 
do
anything in order to get it physically work. However there should be guidelines 
to
make sure the bahavior of the application mentally making sense. And these 
guidelines
are missing.

Original comment by rainwood...@gmail.com on 31 Aug 2009 at 4:21

[GoogleCodeExporter]

http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/wiki/AppGuideLines

Original comment by rainwood...@gmail.com on 31 Aug 2009 at 4:41

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I just wanted to add something since I have seen this as well, except the menu 
doesn't show up at all (regardless of what I click or do), but it seems that 
the latest development build of gimp (I tried version 2.6.8; on 86x_64 ubuntu 
10.04) shows the menu where it shows by default but it still doesn't show up in 
the app menu. hope that can give some one here some insight.

Original comment by joedoe47 on 12 Aug 2010 at 1:57