LO4 in repos?

[Liam Proven]

On 12 February 2013 15:38, Cybe R. Wizard <cyber_wizard at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Are you saying that the drop down menu predates all the applications it
> shows?

I do not understand the question.

> Somehow I don't think that's the case.  I believe the menu does
> the 'integration'

The menu does what? Which menu?

> of all those packages

All what packages?

> and shows them

Shows what?

> no matter the
> package or menu origin date.

I am sorry, I cannot follow your thinking here at all.

> I must be missing something, but can't figure out just what.

You must indeed.

> What is it about Unity which causes it to need packages to support it
> instead of it supporting the packages?  It seems to make for a
> quite limited number of 'supported' packages.
>
> Maybe that's the entire point?

You seem to have this back-to-front or indeed totally muddled up.

Unity is a GNOME-based desktop built with Gtk3.

Some Linux apps are GNOME apps; some of those are current and are
based on Gtk3. (Some still use Gtk2.)

If the app uses Gtk3 to draw its menu bar, Unity can intercept it and
put the menu bar in its Unity bar at the top of the screen. This
doesn't always work - e.g. try Gparted or Emacs/Gtk.

Other Linux apps are KDE apps, or don't integrate with any desktop.
Unity can't capture these apps' menu bars and they too appear
in-window.

Some apps are not Linux apps, they're cross-platform and also run on
other OSs, e.g. Windows and Mac OS X - examples included with Ubuntu
include Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice. Here, because they are
bundled with Ubuntu, Canonical provides plugins or addons to integrate
their menus into the menu bar. IOW special extra measures are in place
to integrate them.

LibreOffice 4 now includes Unity integration in the package. It
doesn't put its menu in the system menu bar, but it does understand
the Launcher and provides a right-click menu and so on. LibreOffice 3
did not do this.

This stuff merely requires a bit of thought about how Linux apps work
and how they are built; it is not very obscure.

Oliver G's explanation, which I've just seen, is also pretty good.


--
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884