Chapter 3. Gnumeric Menus.

3.1. Introduction to Menus in Gnumeric

This section of the manual describes the use of the menu bar and the menus themselves. The manual then explains each entry in every Gnumeric menu, submenu or context menu.

A menu is a graphical element within a program which appears with a list of options. For instance, almost all applications have a File menu through which the user can access the computer's filesystem. The main menus are on the menubar. The use of these menus is discussed in Section 3.1.1. Gnumeric also uses a context menu as a quick way to access certain commands. The context menu will open up right under the mouse pointer when one of the mouse buttons, usually the rightmost, is clicked. This menu is called a context menu because the entries in the menu are different depending on the location of the mouse pointer. The context menu is discussed in Section 3.10.

3.1.1. The Menu bar

The default location of the menu bar is at the top of the application window. The menus provide quick and organized access to all major commands such as opening files, saving files, printing and quiting the application.

Figure 3-1. The Gnumeric menubar.

The leftmost portion of the menu bar is a little tab. This tab can be used to grab the menu bar and remove it from the rest of the application. This is done by clicking and holding on the tab and dragging it away from the Gnumeric window. The menu can also be placed in different parts of the Gnumeric window, so that it could appear at the very bottom of Gnumeric as is shown in Figure 3-2.

Figure 3-2. A re-arranged Gnumeric.

The menubars and the toolbars share this ability to be re-arranged as can be seen in Figure 3-2. The menubar is at the bottom of the Gnumeric window, the standard toolbar has been detached and the object toolbar has been moved the the right side. The user can choose what configuration works best. The toolbars can be dragged back into place in the same manner by which they were moved originally.

3.1.2. General Menu Behaviour

Gnumeric menus are opened with a simple click on the name of the menu in the menu bar. Once clicked, the menu will stay open. If the mouse pointer is dragged over the name of another menu on the menubar, the first menu will close and the new menu open up. This is a useful way to look in each menu to hunt for a commands. The open menu can be closed with a click over any other area of the application or of the desktop. The menus can also be closed by typing the escape key, Esc.

3.1.2.1. Menus can be "torn-off"

Gnumeric menus, like most menus in GNOME project software, are "tear-off" menus. This means that the menu can be opened up into its own window and kept open in a differnt part of the screen. This is useful if there is a menu that you keep using for a particular task. Just beneath the top of each menu is a broken line. Clicking on that line, tears off the menu.

Figure 3-3. Gnumeric menus can be torn off.

To get rid of a dettached menu, the dotted line can be clicked once more or the window containing the menu can simply be closed. The window can usually be closed by clicking in the top right corner of the window but that might be different depending on the desktop in which you have Gnumeric running.

3.1.2.2. Gnumeric also has context menus.

Context menus are menus which appear under the mouse pointer when one of the mouse buttons (usually the rightmost) is clicked. Context menus are discussed in Section 3.10.