Re: [Lxde-list] About Menu-Cache

[Axel F. <axe...@gm...>]

On 09/07/2012 13:40, PCMan wrote:
[...]
> A simple menu definition file used by old window managers looks simple
> and handy.
> Though you have to edit the menu definition file with a text editor,
> ironically, with freedesktop.org spec, menu editing becomes far more
> difficult. Nobody knows exactly how to edit these xml files and there
> is no user-friendly menu editor after so many years.
> I really think the freedesktop.org approach is wrong and it's the
> wrong direction to go.

There's two things I really hate under Linux, their infamous XDG Menu
Specification and the GtkFileChooserDialog...

> Generating a simple menu definition file based on content of
> applications dirs, just like what other window managers did in the
> past, is good enough.

In the picture below, an operating system from 1998 :
http://imagebin.org/index.php?mode=image&id=220083

Categories in the application menu (manually created), some shortcut on
top of the main menu, managing the all menu with drag and drop, no menu
editor needed, only a file manager.

That's just some subdirectories with shortcuts.

Simple.

That would be possible to do something equivalent, when a desktop file
is created into /usr/share/applications, a daemon creates subdirectories
and a symlink to the desktop file into the user's menu directory, then
it's possible to generate a cache from this subdirectory structure, but
you still need to monitor any of these subdirectories, since Average Joe
may add, move, remove, rename some links into these. :D

You also need to remove some dead links that may exist in those
subdirectories.

It would be possible to create an hidden index file in any subdirectory
to sort menu items.

I don't know if that's doable, that was working like this in the past
apparently.

(From the XDG spec)

Legacy Menu Hierarchies

Traditionally, menus were defined as a filesystem hierarchy, with each
filesystem directory corresponding to a submenu. Implementations of this
specification must be able to load these old-style hierarchies as
specified in this section.


I can't understand why they created that horrid XML menu specification...

For sure, GNOME developers have other very good ideas like this,
recently they removed the TreeView from Nautilus, I wonder how GNOME
users, if there's still some GNOME users... will appreciate that brand
new feature. :P


> Please, I need comments and suggestions, especially those from packagers.
> Nowadays KISS in LInux desktop becomes more and more difficult.
> So sad :-(


Difficult ? That's a nightmare. :D



-- 
Axel FILMORE
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