[Lazarus] Compile and Build menu entries, Run- or Project-menu?

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Juha Manninen schrieb:

> I knew I would get in trouble when I started to change the menu structure.
> In some places the structure was clearly wrong but in some others it is 
> a matter of opinion and habbit.
> 
> This one is a matter of opinion and habbit.

And that's why a single solution can not fit everybody's opinion :-(

> I like the new order because I never use "Build" myself. I hit "Run" and 
> the project is built automatically.
> Why would someone want to build a project without running it?

A clean build can fix errors caused by malfunction in the automatisms.


> Now I realized that KDE really graps Ctrl-F9 and I didn't find a way to 
> change it.
> F9 works well though.
> 
> What shall I do with this ? Some people like the change and some people 
> expect me to revert it.

Why stick with a *fixed* layout structure and shortcuts? Make it all
configurable, and all trouble and discussions go away :-)

In the days of Win16 I frequently updated the menus and dialogs of
binary applications, by editing their resources with the Borland
Resource editor. Nowadays, or on other platforms, such user editable
resources are no more available <sigh>. I think that it's time to
provide the users with more configuration features, where the startup
config wizard is a good example.


A generalized menu and shortcut editor, for use also in other
applications, would be a very nice component. A visual menu designer
already exists, why not use it for reconfiguring menus also at runtime,
with drag&drop and template features? The same for the toolbars, which 
also should become editable as in Delphi :-)
[I already saw screenshots of Lazarus with a definitely changed layout 
of the MainBar]

What's needed for that purpose? IMO a list of available Actions is
required, with editable shortcuts and icons. Next comes a Menu editor,
that allows at least to add and remove menu entries and submenus, and to
connect the entries to actions. Captions can stay predefined, to prevent
nationalization trouble. Nonetheless a translation manager would be
nice, too. A GUI with drag&drop would be nice, borrowed from the
according designers. Finally the result should be stored in a config
file, for further use and editing. Support for multiple config files
would be nice, at least it should be possible to load (preconfigured)
config files, and to save one as the config to use (default name?).

For the visual representation of menus a *horizontal* TreeView would be
nice. I doubt that such an Orientation feature already exists, but it
would be fun to implement such a component, possibly based on the
Virtual TreeView, or on nestable ListViews. I also could supply an
according DockManager...

DoDi