Card cut off at bottom because of menu

[Richard Gaskin]

Jeff Massung wrote:

> I think part of the problem here is that Rev treats the main menu as a
> [background?] group of controls that need to be part of the stack. This is a
> fundamental flaw in design.

...if you spend most of your time on a Mac.

On Windows and Linux there are sometimes significant and useful 
variances in how menus are implemented.  Check out the Ribbon in Office 
12 as perhaps the biggest shift, but in addition to that there are times 
when it can be helpful to put other controls at the top of the window 
along with your menus, as Chipp noted here about one of his own apps 
last year.

So if menus were implemented as something entirely separate, ideally it 
would be a separate thing that would allow complete design freedom, as 
with a stack.  Or a group.  And of course we have groups for that now.

If this one bug were fixed this issue wouldn't be nearly the problem it is.

I'm told Mark Waddingham knows where the line of code is that causes 
this, so I'm not sure why it's been outstanding as long as it has.

Of course none of this is an attempt to suggest that Rev's current 
implementation strikes any sort of perfect balance between conformity to 
OS convention and design freedom.  But like they say, "perfect is the 
enemy of results". :)  So far the range of alternatives suggested has 
been broad, few of which could be implemented inexpensively, and all of 
which provide only incremental benefits beyond what we currently have 
(I'd sooner see a stack viewer object, which would give us the menu 
enhancement along with a whole lot more:
<http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=2786>).

In a world where my own list of ways I'd like to see RunRev spend their 
money is long and involves things that can't be easily worked around, I 
don't oppose proposals to pursue some ideal menu system but if it were 
up to me it wouldn't be my highest priority.

That said, if it were up to me I'd fix this one bug post haste.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
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