help with "Xfce menu" on panel

[Jason Keltz]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:

> 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.

Hi Brian.

I have a couple of issues with this.  I'm interested in your feedback.

First -- when it comes to referring to configuration files in Xfce, the
default behaviour seems to be to always check the users home directory
first (~/.config/xfce4).  If the file does not exist there, it checks
the global settings (sysdir/etc/xdg).  The behaviour in this plugin
differs from what seems like the "default" behaviour.

Even if I did copy the menu.xml file to each users home directory, it
seems to me that I am forced to use a full path to the filename.  That
is, I need to reference "/home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/menu.xml". 
There are variables like XDG_CONFIG_HOME that I should be able to use to 
hide the details of "/home/user/.config", but unless I'm wrong, and I 
may very well be, there doesn't seem to be a way for me to use the 
XDG_CONFIG_HOME syntax in Xfce.  Specifying the explicit 
"/home/user/.config" just seems wrong to me.

In my case, many users will not change their default settings because
the settings that I have provided are more than reasonable for our
systems.  In my opinion, this should mean that if I make a change to the
global "Xfce menu" file (in this case, the desktop menu), those users
who have not made changes to their own personal copies should get the
new global file.  For example, if I were to install a new piece of 
software and would like to make that selection available globally, I 
could add it to the global desktop menu file.  If I copy the file into 
each users home directory, I can no longer make global changes to the file.

The menu plugin shares the same code as the "desktop menu", yes, and if
I'm not mistaken, the location of this code is in
xfdesktop-4.2.0/panel-plugin/desktop-menu-plugin.c... If this is really
a "desktop menu plugin" then symantically, I would expect for it to load
the desktop menu, and track its changes.  If this isn't the case, and 
its functionality has become generic so that it doesn't relate directly 
to the desktop menu any longer, I would think you might want to change 
the name of the file.  if it isn't intended to update as the desktop 
menu updates, it certainly shouldn't be called desktop-menu-plugin!

Finally, it appears that on top of all of this, the module does actually 
what I want/need it to do, but only for a little bit! There is 
definately a bug here....

If I:
erase .config and .cache,
login,
add an "Xfce Menu" to the panel using the location of the global
"menu.xml" config file (which happens to be the default!)
add an entry to the "Desktop menu" using the "desktop menu" settings, 
and the "Edit desktop menu" button.  From what you have said, this 
should not update my Xfce menu.  However....
Now, when I click on the "Xfce Menu" on the panel, there is a pause as
it updates, and it actually does indeed update to show the entry that I
just added to the desktop menu!  If this continued to operate like this, 
I wouldn't have a problem.  It has indeed copied the desktop menu into 
my home directory, and that copy shows my change even though the 
properties of the "Xfce menu" still show that it is pointing at the 
global menu.xml file.

If I then logout and then back in again, the "Xfce menu" on the panel
still displays my added setting to the desktop menu in my last session.
However, if I open up the "Settings" and add another item to the desktop
menu, and click on the "Xfce menu" on the panel, there is another pause 
as it reloads again, but this time it displays the original global 
menu.xml file without either of the changes that I just made.

Now I'm definately confused!

Jason.