Don't hide menus

[Daniel]

On 2023-10-13 10:43, Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:
> Am Freitag, dem 13.10.2023 um 08:05 +0200 schrieb Daniel:
>> It seems to be a rather universally accepted UI rule that menu items
>> should not be hidden. Feel free to can check your favorite apps or
>> search the recommendation on the web. (There is also the more extreme
>> recommendations to not even disable menu entries but I think it is
>> generally agreed that this is a bad idea because it leaves the user
>> clicking in vain.)
> 
> Don't like it since
> 
> 1.) we will end up in overcrowded menus full of disabled entries. Too
> long for sure in some cases

An example would be interesting. As I mentioned, I enabled all menu 
items and didn't notice too long menus (not longer than in other popular 
apps anyway).

> 2.) we will run out of accelerators. We currently can provide
> accelerators in the insert and edit menus only since we only show
> active items.

You are right, that I don't know much about the accelerator stuff. But I 
am a bit puzzled how hiding the menus fixes the accelerator problem. 
Doesn't that mean that some menus entries don't have any accelerators or 
that some menu entries will have the same as others?

> I know you don't care about accelerators as they seem to be not common
> on Mac OS. However, I find them a key element of accessibility and much
> more important that some sort of user didactic by showing which
> functions there might be. I also don't see what users gain if they see
> a disabled function as long as they don't learn when and how it is
> enabled.

Users have a chance of directly inferring from a disabled menu when and 
how it is enabled or they can then try to look it up. Not seeing a menu 
entry in the first place seems not help in that respect.

> The two HIGs I consulted (and actually the two we base LyX UI on) have
> this to say:
> 
> "Menus should contain between three and twelve items, and submenus
> should contain between three and six items."
> 
> No word about hiding or not hiding items, but it's clear that you can
> only achieve this by selective display.
> 
> https://developer.gnome.org/hig/patterns/controls/menus.html?highlight=menu
> 
> And
> 
> "Don't put more than 12 items within a single level of a menu. Add
> separators between logical groups within a menu. Organize the menu
> items into groups of seven or fewer strongly related items."
> 
> It also says:
> 
> "Disable menu items that don't apply to the current context instead of
> removing them from view. Exception: It is acceptable to hide menu items
> completely if they are permanently unavailable on the user's system due
> to missing hardware capabilities."
> 
> But this is hard to achieve with the number of items we have.
I think the "(3 to) 12 item" rule is often broken by larger apps while, 
as far as I can see, the "don't hide menu items" rule is not.

> In any case, however this discussion turns out, this is not something
> to be implemented so shortly before a major release. If done, it has to
> be implemented very early in a development cycle and then carefully
> tested.

For sure.

Daniel