idea: new menu editor for xfce

[Christian Dywan]

Am Thu, 3 Apr 2008 12:05:26 +0200
schrieb "Christian M" <bodiak at gmx.de>:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm pretty new here but I've used XFCE for about a year now.
> It's really a great desktop environment and I would like to
> contribute some code :)
> 
> Here is my idea:
> 
> project definition:
> A new menu editor or an enhancement of the current one.
> The software is able to create, organize and edit desktopfiles for
> xfce. This way each user can costumize his system menu.
> 
> roadmap:
> at first this program only manages the system menu.
> later the menu system (and maybe the desktop icons)
>  can be completely transfered to the freedesktop standard(?).
> 
> how:
> the program uses the desktop-files in the ~/.local/share/applications/
> directory.
> If a "external" (outside this working dir) desktop-file should be
> changed the tool will simply copy the file to it's working dir.
> As the used dir always has the highest priority
> this will overwrite the settings of other files with the same name.
> 
> features (similiar to gnomes alacarte):
> -edit menu entries
> -create menu entries
> --add "locations" like in alacarte
> -show a list of the available menu entries
> -activate/deactivate entries
> -delete costum entries
> -show a list of the available and used categories
> 
> development:
> I would like to use glade and anjunta for coding as this handles the
> gtk code quite nicely and keeps it away from the other code.
> 
> I'm a bit new to programming in C but I would like to give it a try.
> 
> What do you think? Any recommendations?
> 
> cheers
> MilesTeg
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Hi MilesTeg,

that sounds like a pretty nice project. The current editor is pretty
limited in what you can do with it and editing files manually is not
too convenient especially for the majority of users who don't happen to
know all the freedesktop specs well enough.

I think a new editor is probably the better idea. I would find it nice
if you could look into making an interface that looks and behaves more
like the other settings apps so that it doesn't stand out so much.

I wonder whether it makes sense to look into recent Glib additions
regarding desktop file awareness. Since we are talking about a future
Xfce. But of course I don't know what Gtk/Glib that should target.

Yours,
    Christian