Menus

[chris dunn]

Erik Harrison wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 

OK. Thanks for all of this.

It looks as though I can now spend a few hours getting my menus in the 
shape I want.

But why do smeg and xfce 4 menu-editor not pick up the same menu 
listings as the desktop menu. Particularly the xfce menu-editor which I 
would have thought was geared up to read the xfce desktop menu.

Chris Dunn