5 ms·

That motif toolkit with the detachable pulldowns and diamond shaped radios... I know tk has moved on but I have not.

systems 2y ago
detachable menus is an undervalued feature, being able to detach a menu or submenu and cycle through its element, is great to have when you need it
- kristopolous 2y ago
  There's a bunch of innovative things that just didn't go through enough design cycles to get the flow right which have since been abandoned
- HexDecOctBin 2y ago
  Is there a screenshot/gif/video/demo that demonstrates what you mean? Like, so you mean any group of widgets can be turned into its own window?
  - jjnoakes 2y ago
    The application menus (like File, Edit, etc) had a built-in way of detaching them when they were expanded so that you could keep them open and place them somewhere convenient on your screen. This was useful if you had to select different menu options frequently.
  - systems 2y ago
    here you go https://tkdocs.com/images/tearoff.png https://tkdocs.com/images/tearoff.png this used to be on by default in IDLE-python, but it seems they disabled it in more recent versions you clicked tat dotted line and the menu detached and you could place it anywhere you wanted
fuzztester 2y ago
IIRC they were called tear-off menus in X / Motif days. I had attended a company course on X Windows, Xlib, and Motif programming, back in the day. Motif might have been clunky or whatever, but was also powerful. That course was my first introduction to event-driven GUI programming and I was quite junior then, and didn't quite grok all the programming concepts involved, but a colleague, who was more knowledgeable, created a rudimentary MS Paint-like application, in about 1 hour or less, using Motif and C. (Okay, he worked in the same company as me, but in a different city, so might have had the hardware and software resources to practice on X and Motif before the course, which I did not have.) Search for 16.3.7 at: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/volume-6a-motif/9780596000431/chapter-223.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/volume-6a-motif/9780596... or search for tear-off menu at: https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch15.html https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch15...

detachable menus is an undervalued feature, being able to detach a menu or submenu and cycle through its element, is great to have when you need it

kristopolous 2y ago
There's a bunch of innovative things that just didn't go through enough design cycles to get the flow right which have since been abandoned
HexDecOctBin 2y ago
Is there a screenshot/gif/video/demo that demonstrates what you mean? Like, so you mean any group of widgets can be turned into its own window?
- jjnoakes 2y ago
  The application menus (like File, Edit, etc) had a built-in way of detaching them when they were expanded so that you could keep them open and place them somewhere convenient on your screen. This was useful if you had to select different menu options frequently.
- systems 2y ago
  here you go https://tkdocs.com/images/tearoff.png https://tkdocs.com/images/tearoff.png this used to be on by default in IDLE-python, but it seems they disabled it in more recent versions you clicked tat dotted line and the menu detached and you could place it anywhere you wanted

fuzztester 2y ago

IIRC they were called tear-off menus in X / Motif days. I had attended a company course on X Windows, Xlib, and Motif programming, back in the day. Motif might have been clunky or whatever, but was also powerful. That course was my first introduction to event-driven GUI programming and I was quite junior then, and didn't quite grok all the programming concepts involved, but a colleague, who was more knowledgeable, created a rudimentary MS Paint-like application, in about 1 hour or less, using Motif and C. (Okay, he worked in the same company as me, but in a different city, so might have had the hardware and software resources to practice on X and Motif before the course, which I did not have.) Search for 16.3.7 at: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/volume-6a-motif/9780596000431/chapter-223.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/volume-6a-motif/9780596... or search for tear-off menu at: https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch15.html https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/vol6a/Vol6a_html/ch15...