XDG menu implementation

[Benedikt Meurer]

Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
>>>some might have noticed it: I've started to work on the XDG menu
>>>implementation I was talking about when we discussed Google's SoC.
>>>
>>>I'd like to discuss several topics in this mail:
>>>
>>>[...]
>>>
>>>Please tell me what you think about it - does the concept sound ok
>>>to you? Personally, I really like it and I think it's a good
>>>starting point.
>>
>>Could this library be used for a menu editor, too? Or will it only be
>>able to read the menu?
> 
> Menu editing is a very complex topic. I'll try to make the library as
> flexible as possible. E.g. I won't drop menus which are marked
> as deleted (as the spec says). Instead, there will be a function to
> check if a menu should be displayed or not. Via GObject properties,
> it's very easy to change menu details, but the most difficult part is
> how to save changed menus / directories / desktop entries. 
> 
> So it's not completely impossible, but it has low priority at the
> moment. At least, menu editors can use the library to load a menu
> structure. If they implement saving the modifications by themselves,
> that's all they need.

I'd suggest to implement only trivial editing capabilities (i.e.
changing the name of an application in the .desktop file) if at all.
Editing the XDG menu structure is a really complex task and can easily
decrease the reliability, performance and thereby the usefulness of the
libxfce4menu.

> - Jannis

Benedikt