Make MAX_ITEMS_OR_SUBMENU a gconf key

thanks for your report, this needs to be looked by a desktop dev, thanks.

There is an upstream patch to ship the variable to gconf. It's not the perfect fix -- that would be deteching the screen height and working out how many entries we could paint -- but it's a million miles better than the current state of things.

I've seen this bug reported before (well over a year ago), dozens of forum threads about it all over the internet and there's still no sign of anybody taking it seriously.

I don't want to sound snotty but wouldn't it be even slightly possible to get the patch worked in at our side rather than waiting another eternity for Gnome to step up?

Creating new gconf keys does not improve the default Ubuntu experience for most users, therefore this is not a paper cut.

As a user that has been affected by this problem, allow me to state that for me it would make things ten times easier, and I think I can speak for everyone else who has had the same problem. Those who haven't would most probably not even notice an extra gconf key... or at least it wouldn't hurt them. Please reconsider.

Uh, please disregard my previous comment. I misread the notification email, not noticing the package on which it was declared invalid (the fact that I didn't know about the 100papercuts project played a role, too). Sorry for the inconvenience. (btw, how come we can't edit/delete our comments? At least in the following few minutes, it should be possible)

Is there any decision on this bug? I successfully baked my own packages with these patches. It compiles fine and works as expected. As upstream is rather slow on this one (the gnome bug is over a year old), I pledge for inclusion in Ubuntu.

@Lee G. : In Ubuntu we have increased the limit from 5 to 8 items in Karmic, anything larger would not be ideal...
The gconf is probably not needed now...
Also, since gnome-shell is taking more importance , not sure if that will make any progress.

@mac_v: Ah, I remember I had to disable that patch in the source for dpkg-buildpackage not to bail out on these patches. I hadn't noticed the 5->8 transition on upgrade to karmic as I have ~15 bookmarks. I would suggest then that we integrate the patches and set the gconf value to 8. This wouldn't change things for anyone, but would allow people (who want to) to adjust this value. I have this value set to 20 right now, and it looks fine.

@Vish: How do you know anything larger than 8 is "not ideal"? On my screen I think about 15 would be the ideal maximum. But I would not go so far as to assume this is everyone's ideal.

I recently added a bookmark, bringing the number to 9, and now annoyingly I have to click twice (and precisely, clicking Places is easy since its at the top of the screen). The worst part of it is that now the Places menu only takes up 1/4 of my total vertical space. And if the Bookmarks were not collapsed, still it would take up only 1/3.

I thought at first that this ridiculous limit might be a case of this:
http://uxmyths.com/post/931925744/myth-23-choices-should-always-be-limited-to-seven

But it seems that the number 8 was instead plucked out of thin air.

I realise Gnome Shell is being replaced in 11.04, but I imagine regular gnome will still be supported officially.

@Beetroot : Why it is "not ideal" , is because; increasing the limit for bookmarks section also increases the limit for the devices section (computer, drives, external drives, network..) Both are controlled by the same key right now.
Increasing the limit will make the "Recent documents" list even more difficult to access, might even go out of the screen, with a need to scroll. (Yes this is another bug in gnome-panel itself.)

However, do note that the gnome-panel task for this bug is still open, so this can still get fixed. (Only the papercut task has been closed.)