gui and panels

[p-m]

Hi,
I would like to use the gui-menu-bar and then in the space below the 5 panels of a panel-box-layout. For now, I use just 4 panels by hiding the top-panel:
:top-height (menu-bar-height menu)
and
(setf (z-index (top-panel console)) -9999)
I guess, that I could open a gui-window without title-bar and maximised, and put the panels there, but I’m sure, that there must be a cleaner way to put just anything on the remaining space below the menu-bar. What do you think?
TIA for any hints, Peter

[cookesan]

create-panel-box-layout fills its parent from the parent's top-left; it does not automatically reserve space for a GUI menu bar.

The GUI window code accounts for the menu bar by using menu-bar-height, but the panel-box layout code just creates the five panels inside the object you pass to it. So if you create the layout directly on the body after adding a menu bar, the layout can start underneath/over the same space.

Create a container below the menu bar and put the panel-box layout inside that container. In other words, set the container top to the menu bar height and bottom to 0, then call create-panel-box-layout on that container rather than on the body.

[p-m]

Thanks for your answer!
Very slowly I understand better the differences between containers, panels and GUI-Windows.
I would like to work mainly with the space under the menu-bar without creation
of any window, so I create a container, that fits exactly there, as you suggest. And for some
dialogues I would like to use GUI-Windows. It seems, that my container must use
a very low z-index, to be able to see them.
Is there something more, that I should know about this subject, before
starting my project?

Kind regards, Peter