help with "Xfce menu" on panel

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Jason Keltz wrote:

> I have configured the "desktop" menu with most of the applications on 
> our system.  I have created an "Xfce Menu" on the panel which points 
> at the desktop menu file by default.  Now, users can get at all of the 
> applications through the desktop menu, or through the panel.  The idea 
> is that as the user updates their desktop menu, the panel menu updates 
> as well.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work like this.  When the user 
> updates the desktop menu through the "Desktop" configuration in 
> settings, the global desktop menu is copied into the users 
> .config/xfce4/desktop/menu.xml directory.  However, the "Xfce menu" on 
> the panel still points to the global file in 
> sysdir/etc/xdg/xfce4/desktop/menu.xml.  Now, the user sees their 
> changes on the desktop menu, but not on the panel menu.  Since the 
> menu.xml file is only copied to the users home directory if they make 
> changes to it, I can't even just point it at the file in the users 
> home directory because it may not even be there.
>
> Is there any way to tell the Xfce panel menu to look at local menu.xml 
> if it exists, and if it doesn't to look at the global one?

Nope.  The menu plugin for the panel is intended to be independent of 
the desktop menu (uses the same code, but, as you've found, not 
necessarily the same file).  Why not just start off by copying your 
premade menu to ~/.config/xfce4/desktop/menu.xml?  Then edits to that 
via the desktop menu will automatically show up in the panel plugin menu.

    -b