Integrate Menu Bar Into Title Bar - Congruence Between Title Bars And Header Bars

Hi,

I just wanted to ask whether it will ever be possible for an option to integrate the menu bar into the title bar? Sort of like how Unity used Locally Integrated Menus except with better theming. I think it adds good congruence between title bars without client-side decorations and header bars with client-side decorations, while fully maintaining functionality and improving on vertical space use - see the examples below with the title bars and header bars themed with the same height. Just an idea which would really make my year!

Also, this is my first post and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who makes Ubuntu Budgie possible - it is greatly appreciated!

Imgur album with more images and the original images for comparison: https://imgur.com/a/7Rbb9Pt. (I’m apparently only allowed to put one image in a post since I’m a new user).

(I know it is possible for a global menu, but that just becomes confusing when you have multiple programs with menu bars on multiple monitors and you need to first select the window to get the global menu to change to the right program - it just breaks my workflow I guess).

'fraid it isnt possible.

Canonical only achieved this by creating a huge patch-set across multiple applications and code libraries - writing a huge change onto compiz itself.

Gradually these patches are being removed - I’ve noticed this removal accelerating in 20.04 and it will continue. Hence why the small band of Unity desktop devs are having big issues trying to keep up and workaround stuff.

It needs a much bigger developer community to support such a feature - with its own window manager etc.

Indeed.

Aren’t any applications supposed to « list » somewhere → this is my menu → that is a subsection of my menu ?

I don’t know. I just wonder how KDE/plasma seems to achieve « global menu » and ( a sort of ) locally integrated menu. Are these « menu » specific to GTK on one side and Qt on the other side ?

The key is the window manager - KDE/plasma has their own. Unity has compiz. Budgie 10.x uses mutter … my understanding that in future it will have its own window manager.

Then what is needed are apps that have menus. GNOME based apps have basically done away with those (Canonical used to patch those apps to support both Unity & GNOME Shell). So any desktop/distro needing to support LIMs will need to be very careful with their application choice.

Ok, thanks for clarification, I’m a bit lost regarding who does what amongst windows-decoration, theming, windows-manager and so on.

It seemed obvious to me that any application published what is its own menu, regardless final environment, to maximize compatibility. Then environment would take these raw menu info to display them in their final graphical form, be it csd or else. So this is not the case ?

Not any more. Many apps - especially modern apps no longer support menus.

Where modern means lazy.

Are Gimp, Inkscape, Darktable, Blender, Kdenlive, LibreOffice, OnlyOffice and so on not modern app’s ?

I don’t think the distinction sits between modern and old. Some app’s need menu because they help do heavy work. Some fit in few csd buttons because they aim at fewer tasks. One [ menu-style ] can’t fit all [ app’s and users’ needs ].

Thank you very much for the information! I thought it would be something simple along the lines of just identifying the menu like what the global menu does, but drawing it on the title bar instead of a panel - I guess I’m clearly out of my depth. Thanks again, it is greatly appreciated!