GNOME Menu Editing

[Paul Vandenberg]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if GNOME menu editing will be enabled in FC3? I am
really getting tired of editing .desktop files.

Thanks...Paul

[Michael Knepher]

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 13:11 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  Can anyone tell me if GNOME menu editing will be enabled in FC3? I am
>  really getting tired of editing .desktop files. 
It doesn't look like it, and it seems to be a low priority for the GNOME
folks. I'm surprised some enterprising hacker hasn't put together a
front-end for manipulating the xml menu files. It shouldn't take much
more than spit and baling wire ...

[Paul Vandenberg]

>  On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 13:11 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Can anyone tell me if GNOME menu editing will be enabled in FC3? I
> > am
> > really getting tired of editing .desktop files.
>
>  It doesn't look like it, and it seems to be a low priority for the
>  GNOME
>  folks. I'm surprised some enterprising hacker hasn't put together a
>  front-end for manipulating the xml menu files. It shouldn't take much
>  more than spit and baling wire ...
>
>
>
>
>
>  --
>  Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
>  Fedora-desktop-list(a)redhat.com
>  http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list
>  
As far as I know, it was Red Hat that disabled it, not GNOME. In fact,
I read that the menu editing was improved in the upcoming GNOME 2.8. I
was hoping that this would make Red Hat (Fedora) turn it back on
again. It is frustrating that repeated calls for menu editing are
falling on deaf ears! If Mandrake wasn't a GNOME release behind, I
would consider switching.

Paul

[Ricardo Veguilla]

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 20:20 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:

>  
>  As far as I know, it was Red Hat that disabled it, not GNOME. In fact,
>  I read that the menu editing was improved in the upcoming GNOME 2.8. I
>  was hoping that this would make Red Hat (Fedora) turn it back on
>  again. It is frustrating that repeated calls for menu editing are
>  falling on deaf ears! If Mandrake wasn't a GNOME release behind, I
>  would consider switching.
>  
>  Paul
>   
Well, I don't know whats Fedora (Red Hat... whatever) position regarding
menu editing, but if you check the GNOME mailing list archive
(http://mail.gnome.org) you will find its true that menu editing isn't a
high priority problem for the GNOME team for many valid reasons.

Besides, I don't know if the GNOME team was planning to improve menu
editing in for the Gnome 2.8, but as far as I can tell (and I'm
currently running Gnome 2.7) there is no visible improvement
whatsoever. 

I'm not speaking for the GNOME Developers in any way, this is only my
understanding of the situation as a mailing list lurker. 

-- 
Ricardo Veguilla <veguilla(a)hpcf.upr.edu&gt;

[Alexander Larsson]

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 20:20 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:

>  As far as I know, it was Red Hat that disabled it, not GNOME. In
> fact,
>  I read that the menu editing was improved in the upcoming GNOME 2.8. I
>  was hoping that this would make Red Hat (Fedora) turn it back on
>  again. It is frustrating that repeated calls for menu editing are
>  falling on deaf ears! If Mandrake wasn't a GNOME release behind, I
>  would consider switching. 
Some time during the Gnome 2.8 cycle was spent on the menu system
backend itself, making it use a shared freedesktop.org specification,
but as yet there is no menu editor. The reason the upstream vfolder
"menu editing" is disabled is that its very unstable and crashes a lot.

There will be some changes to the way the panel handles menus in Gnome
2.10, and hopefully we'll get a sane menu editor by then.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl(a)redhat.com    alla(a)lysator.liu.se 
He's an otherworldly drug-addicted inventor plagued by the memory of his 
family's brutal murder. She's a brilliant green-skinned pearl diver who hides 
her beauty behind a pair of thick-framed spectacles. They fight crime!

[Dan Williams]

Hi,

Actual menu editing through the GNOME VFS menu method is not going to be 
turned on since there are still lots of problems with it.  If there is 
going to be menu editing, then it will be with, as Michael suggests here, 
an app to edit the XML files directly.

Dan

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Michael Knepher wrote:

>  On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 13:11 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:
>  > Hi,
>  > 
>  > Can anyone tell me if GNOME menu editing will be enabled in FC3? I am
>  > really getting tired of editing .desktop files.
>  
>  It doesn't look like it, and it seems to be a low priority for the GNOME
>  folks. I'm surprised some enterprising hacker hasn't put together a
>  front-end for manipulating the xml menu files. It shouldn't take much
>  more than spit and baling wire ... 
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  -- 
>  Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
>  Fedora-desktop-list(a)redhat.com
>  http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list
>

[Paul Vandenberg]

>  Hi,
>
>  Actual menu editing through the GNOME VFS menu method is not going to
>  be
>  turned on since there are still lots of problems with it.  If there is
>  going to be menu editing, then it will be with, as Michael suggests
>  here,
>  an app to edit the XML files directly.
>
>  Dan
>
>  On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Michael Knepher wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 13:11 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Can anyone tell me if GNOME menu editing will be enabled in FC3? I
> > am
> > > really getting tired of editing .desktop files.
> >
> > It doesn't look like it, and it seems to be a low priority for the
> > GNOME
> > folks. I'm surprised some enterprising hacker hasn't put together a
> > front-end for manipulating the xml menu files. It shouldn't take
> > much
> > more than spit and baling wire ...
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
> > Fedora-desktop-list(a)redhat.com
> > http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list
> >
>
>
>  --
>  Fedora-desktop-list mailing list
>  Fedora-desktop-list(a)redhat.com
>  http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list
>  
Well...I've never really done GUI programming. I earn my bread and
butter doing mainframe programming. Perhaps, it is time to get my
hands dirty and take a stab at it. How hard would it be to create a,
"system-config-menu"? Could I use one of the other system-config tools
as a model?

Paul
Thanks...Paul

[Dan Williams]

On Thu, 2004-09-09 at 09:09 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:
>  Well...I've never really done GUI programming. I earn my bread
> and
>  butter doing mainframe programming. Perhaps, it is time to get my
>  hands dirty and take a stab at it. How hard would it be to create a,
>  "system-config-menu"? Could I use one of the other system-config tools
>  as a model? 
Paul,

Such an application would have wider acceptance/use than just Fedora
Core, since the menu code that Fedora Core uses will be upstream in
GNOME 2.8 (already in KDE).  Therefore, whatever application gets
written should be targetted at GNOME and not specifically Fedora Core.
In any case, it would have to be C/C++ to be accepted into upstream
GNOME (as Python, which all the other system-config-* tools are written
in, is not an accepted gnome language yet).  It wouldn't be a
particularly hard application, but there would of course be a lot of XML
manipulation involved.  Take a look at:

http://freedesktop.org/Standards/menu-spec/0.8/
http://www.gnome.org/~calum/usability/specs/menu-edit/

Even if, for the moment, the editor just edited the system menu files
and didn't touch the user-specific ones, it would be a win over what we
have now.

Dan

[Havoc Pennington]

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 20:20 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:
>  As far as I know, it was Red Hat that disabled it, not GNOME. In
> fact,
>  I read that the menu editing was improved in the upcoming GNOME 2.8. I
>  was hoping that this would make Red Hat (Fedora) turn it back on
>  again. It is frustrating that repeated calls for menu editing are
>  falling on deaf ears! If Mandrake wasn't a GNOME release behind, I
>  would consider switching. 
Pretty sure the upstream GNOME improvement was Mark and Dan's work to go
to the new menu format. We prioritized that ahead of writing the editor,
since we'd have to go back and write the editor again otherwise. Plus,
the new format is a fair bit more human-editable. Or at least, a fair
bit more documented.

But yeah, menu editor is on our list but not the highest priority. Our
largest focuses for desktop are 1) to get rid of any need to use the
command line, specifically for hardware, e.g. NetworkManager and 2)
enterprise management and security stuff like kerberos and remote
desktop sharing and so forth.

Havoc

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Thu, 2004-09-09 at 22:51, Havoc Pennington wrote:
>  On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 20:20 -0400, Paul Vandenberg wrote:
>  > As far as I know, it was Red Hat that disabled it, not GNOME. In fact,
>  > I read that the menu editing was improved in the upcoming GNOME 2.8. I
>  > was hoping that this would make Red Hat (Fedora) turn it back on
>  > again. It is frustrating that repeated calls for menu editing are
>  > falling on deaf ears! If Mandrake wasn't a GNOME release behind, I
>  > would consider switching.
>  
>  Pretty sure the upstream GNOME improvement was Mark and Dan's work to go
>  to the new menu format. 
	Nothing changed with menus upstream in GNOME 2.8 :-)

	But switching to the new upstream format is the first thing I'm
planning on tackling for 2.10:

  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-May/msg00232.html

Cheers,
Mark.