Subject: Re: bug#1405: detached GTK+ tool bar

From: Stephen Berman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:08:16 +0100

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:38:32 -0500 Chong Yidong <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Excerpted from bug#1405:
>
>> ...
>> Perhaps this is a GTK+ bug, but I'm not aware of another GTK+ app
>> aside from Emacs that uses a detachable tool bar to test for it.
>
> When Emacs got detachable tool bars, it was the standard for GTK
> applications to provide a detachable tool bar.  Nowadays, no other GTK
> application provides a detachable tool bar as far as I can tell.  (Maybe
> this feature was considered useless?)  So maybe we should turn this off.
>
> Jan, what do you think?

There is a practical argument in favor of keeping the detachable tool
bar, namely, the "shrinking frame" bug I reported to emacs-devel a year
ago (see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/83390).  This bug
still exists, and when it happens -- very often, in my usage -- it is
quite annoying.  But with the tool bar detached, it does not happen.  So
with a detachable tool bar, I don't suffer a shrinking frame and I get
to use the tool bar; without a detachable tool bar, I'd have to choose
one or the other (or change (some aspect(s) of) my desktop).  (Of
course, if the shrinking frame bug is fixed, it would eliminate this
argument for a detachable tool bar.  A remaining argument, but one less
important to me, is that a detachable tool bar saves screen real
estate.)

Steve Berman