Menus

[Erik Harrison]

On 11/8/05, chris dunn <chris at dunnz.org> wrote:
> Having moved to XFCE4 under Ubuntu Breezy (after the initial Gnome
> default), I have ended up with a confusing desktop menu situation.
>
> The desktop menu seems to include everything under the sun, including
> some of the original Gnome entries. All the Xfce 4 entries seem to be
> present under Settings.
>
> I'd like to completely revamp the menus to suit my needs and am
> floundering around trying to find out how the desktop menu generation
> system works.
>
> Running smeg seems to show a (somewhat) different set of entries to that
> which actually exists on the desktop menu. Running Xfce 4 menu editor
> shows only a few basic entries from the existing desktop menu. I've been
> unable to locate any useful information on the operation of smeg or xfce
> 4 menu editor.
>
> Where are these three (desktop + smeg + xfce 4 menu editor) getting
> their information from?
>
> Is there a desktop menu primer somewhere that I've failed to spot?

You could check the Xfdesktop FAQ

http://spuriousinterrupt.org/projects/xfce4/#faq

>
> Or can some kind soul give me a pointer as to where to start sorting out
> this chaos.

It's pretty simple - applications now install files like gimp.desktop
to a few standard public locations, specfically so that Gnome, KDE,
and Xfce can all discover the applications for things like menus.

By default the Xfce menu uses a magic include that includes a "system"
menu which is auto generated from these files. You have three options
to change what appears in your menu.

1) Edit an entire menu from scratch, including only those apps you
care about. This will give you exactly what you want, at the expense
of not discovering newly installed applications.

2) Edit the .desktop files themselves, or even simply delete those you
don't care about.

3) Simply uninstall any apps you don't care about, thus removing their
.desktop files.

>
> Thanks.
>
> Chris Dunn
> _______________________________________________
> Xfce mailing list
> Xfce at xfce.org
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> http://www.xfce.org
>


--
Erik

"If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it
would have changed the history of music... and of aviation."