0022. Clickable elements are at least 24 px, and menus' items 24 px high

Date: 2026-10-24

Status

Accepted; the menu part superseded by ADR-0023, which keeps menus egui's own size. The user found the Patina desktop's menus, then drawn as egui's context menus are, too short, chose 24 px for an item, and asked that nothing clickable be smaller than 24×24; text that's only read can be any size. patina::menu is my design.

Context

egui's menus set the button padding to nothing, so an item is interact_size.y high: 18 px by default, with 3 px between items. Files' context menus and the Patina desktop's (patina-menu) are 18 px an item, which is a small target for a pointer and smaller than menus on other desktops (macOS about 22, GNOME about 30). egui's other widgets default to 18 px as well.

egui's Response::context_menu always applies its own menu_style; there's no global setting for a menu's style. Popup::context_menu(response).style(...) takes another.

Decision

• A clickable element is at least 24×24 px, a rule in docs/design.md. Text only read is exempt.
• patina::menu: ITEM (24.0); style, egui's menu_style with interact_size.y at ITEM, so buttons, checkboxes and radio buttons in a menu are 24 high; and context(&response, add), a context menu in that style, for apps to use in place of response.context_menu.
• The Patina desktop's patina-menu draws its menus with menu::style.

Consequences

• Apps' context menus change by moving to menu::context; Files first.
• Menus opened from a menu bar (ui.menu_button) and submenus still take egui's style. They'd need MenuButton with a MenuConfig in Patina's style.
• Widgets outside menus keep egui's 18 px default until each app or a skin gives them room; the rule says what they should be, it doesn't yet enforce it.

Revisit when

• egui lets a menu's style be set for the whole context.
• 24 px proves too tall in dense menus, or too small on touch screens.