How do edit/add items/folders to the start menu?

[Chris G]

On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 08:52:38PM -0700, Auke Kok wrote:
> On 09/06/2010 06:30 PM, Todd And Margo Chester wrote:
> >Hi All,
> >
> >In 4.6.2, how do I edit and/or add items and folders to the start menu? Is
> >there some tool like gnome's "alacarte" menu editor?
> 
> FAQ item, answered in the ML FAQ, quote:
> 
> ===
> + How do I edit the system application menu?
> 
> The menu is partially autogenerated by xfdesktop. If you want to just
> delete or add one or two applications, add the proper .desktop file
> (usually in /usr/share/applications). With the xfce4-menueditor, you can
> completely customize the menu.
> ===
> 
> >Also (need both answered as GUI tools always leave things off), where
> >do I go to manually edit these items?
> 
> the idea is that you should never have to edit them. If you do,
> there are only these options:
> 
> 1) edit the files (as root) in /usr/share/applications directly.
> Please note that the next time that you upgrade a package that
> installs one of these files, your changes are probably lost. Also,
> if there is an error in these files here, you probably should just
> file a bugreport upstream or send the package maintainer a patch
> with the fix.
> 
> 2) make an "overlay" desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/
> with the same filename and your modifications here. In case the
> package that provided the original desktop file has useful changes
> for you, you won't get them, and you're better off doing the
> upstream-patch/bugreport method in 1).
> 
> 3) not use automatic menu's and use a manual menu editor. You'll
> lose all the goodies from using the autogenerated menus. You're
> better off doing the method at 1).
> 
> 4) If there's apps missing, consider making a new one and doing the
> upstream submission method described in 1).
> 
The trouble is that all of the above assumes that everyone wants the
default setup.  What if I want to add an applicaation that isn't
distributed as an xfce/xubuntu package and doesn't add itself to the
menus? These are not all that rare, in many cases they are tiny little
utilities developed to do a particular job and don't merit the
development overhead of doing all the menu stuff.

Adding a .desktop file is a rather 'uncomfortable' way of doing it for
the average user.

-- 
Chris Green