Should use flat menus by default instead of 3D menus

Binary package hint: wine

There are two different menu styles in Windows/Wine, and the flat style looks better. (It's the default in WinXP until you change your theme.) It can be selected by flipping a bit in user.reg:

"UserPreferenceMask"=hex:10,00,00,80

change to:

"UserPreferenceMask"=hex:10,00,02,80

http://blogs.msdn.com/tonyschr/archive/2004/05/10/129412.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/menus/flatmenuform.aspx

Filed upstream in Wine bug database:

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14811

I meant this as part of Ubuntu's default theme, not a bug for upstream.

Assigning to Ubuntu Wine group

Here's a screenshot illustrating the difference. I think flat menus should be the default in Ubuntu because it looks better and more closely matches Gnome themes.

I don't understand how the default user.reg is generated, but if you delete it and start Wine, a new one will be generated, and the [Control Panel\\Desktop] key is empty. So there is no UserPreferenceMask at all in the default config.

The default registry is generated with the installer script at /usr/share/wine/wine.inf at wineprefixcreate time (when there's no .wine directory). We could patch it there to change the default.

That wouldn't change it for people who already have Wine installed, which may or may not be desirable.

It can't be done with a .reg file, either, as far as I know, since it involves flipping one bit of a Registry value instead of changing the entire value.

Wine now "updates" prefixes automatically when it detects that it's running a new version. It may not be possible to prevent it from overwriting existing settings if you use that method.

> Wine now "updates" prefixes automatically when it detects that it's running a new version. It may not be possible to prevent it from overwriting existing settings if you use that method.

I don't understand what this means. It would overwrite the user's settings and force the flat menus when it is upgraded?

"Note: wineprefixcreate is deprecated and should not be needed anymore. WINEPREFIX creation and updates now happen automatically when needed by wineboot. The functionality provided by wineprefixcreate has moved off to more suitable places (aka wine.inf and wineboot)."

"Additionally wineboot will automatically update the WINEPREFIX directory if wine.inf changes (eg as a result of upgrading to a new Wine release)." http://wiki.winehq.org/wineboot

Wine destroys all kinds of registry entries when upgrading.
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31655