TIP:            161
Title:          Change Default for Menu's -tearoff Option to False
Version:        $Revision: 1.2 $
Author:         Mark Roseman <mark@markroseman.com>
State:          Draft
Type:           Project
Vote:           Pending
Created:        19-Oct-2003
Post-History:   
Tcl-Version:    9.0

~ Abstract

This TIP proposes changing the default value of the ''-tearoff''
option on menu widgets to false, from its current setting of true.

~ Rationale

The default presence of tearoffs for Tk's menus originated with the
Motif look & feel, which was the platform standard used for earlier
Unix-only versions of Tk.  In more modern user interface toolkits on
Unix, as well as Macintosh and Windows, menus do not normally have
tearoffs associated with them.  For applications today, menus without
tearoffs are the standard, with tearoff menus being the exception.

While turning off the tearoff on menus can be accomplished either with
a configuration option on the particular menu, or a global option
setting, this can be a source of confusion for the new Tk developer,
and too easily forgotten by other developers.  Forcing developers to
take extra action to achieve "standard" user interface behavior is
contrary to Tk's philosophy.

~ Proposed Change

Implementation of this TIP requires only changing a single default in
each of the platform specific ''tk*Default.h'' files, and updating the
documentation and test cases.

~ Compatibility

Unfortunately, entries in menus are often accessed by index within
scripts, and the presence or absence of tearoff affects this index.
Therefore, changing the default setting of this option will affect a
large number of scripts.  Though fixing these scripts will be
straightforward (either through adjusting access to individual menus,
or using the option database to turn the tearoff option back on),
because of the incompatibility this TIP is proposed for 9.0 rather
than 8.x.

~ Copyright

This document has been placed in the public domain.