How to edit application menus

[Christoph Wickert]

Ho John!

Am Dienstag, den 22.11.2011, 19:36 -0800 schrieb John Jason Jordan:

> After hours of googling none of the suggestions that I have found for
> editing the application menus work. For example, apparently there are
> desktop entries in /usr/share and in ~/.local/share/applications, but I
> can't find desktop files for some of the items that appear in the menu.
> I also can't find any place where the folders are listed.

/usr/share/desktop-directories

> Alacarte ran briefly after the upgrade from 14 to 16, but after nearly
> a thousand software updates it won't launch at all. 

I doubt it was ever running because it is incompatible with GNOME 3.0:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=657512 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=734442

> I really need to edit the application menus. I hope someone here can
> tell me the secret. I don't mind doing it manually; I just need clear
> instructions.

Did you already read http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu ? I doubt
you will have to edit xfce-applications.menu, most things can be done by
adding proper categories to the *.desktop files. When you add some, make
sure to use the registered values from
http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html

Regards,
Christoph