* Enrico Zini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [030417 03:30]: > On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 05:10:58PM +0200, Bernhard R. Link wrote: > > > > We have at least three parallel menu systems around: the Debian Menu, > > > the Gnome Foot Menu and the KDE menu. > > We have one menu system: the Debian menu. > > And we have several programs with menus, like Gnome, KDE, fvwm, icewm, > > wmaker, .... > > I'm sorry: sid is currently shipping at least three parallel menu > hierarchies: the Debian one, the Gnome one and the KDE one.
A menu hirachy is still no menu system. With menu system meaning something to centrally manage menus and make it accessable to the menu implementations. > If you open > your Gnome foot menu, you can see all three, and you don't know which > one to use to look for the application you want to launch. That's just a matter of (at least corporate or educational use) insane defaults. With the exception of KDE-packages, which do not support the Debian menu system, everything I saw could be configured to provide onls the debian-menu, which already supports consistent menus for almost every window-environment (wm2 and KDE beeing exceptions). > I'm sorry, I still do not get your point: what do linker have to do with > launcher menus? What has a menu to do with the desktop? > > I do not meant "switch" in the sense of making them more similar. > > I meant in the meaning of "making another run where one in running quite > > now". > > Yes, the other menus do not have a facility for changing the window > manager on the fly. It could be argued that this is a task that do not > necessarily belong to the menu system. In fact, switching WM is > different than launching an application, both in terms of operations you > need to do and in terms of user perception and user goals. It may be a different thing in user perception under Gnome and KDE and different in user goals from the new "desktop" look no longer seeing the window-manager as just another program. But it information about programs users want to start. If this information is presented to the user by means of a list to select from (display manger), menu entry (lightwight window-manager) or checkboxes in some dialog (heavyweight "desktops" may do) is just a matter of the menu implementation, and not the menu system. > Maybe a separate tool can be developed for WM switching (and possibly > also to set the default WM for the Debian X session). Gnome does it > through its preferences window, and I think that it's a good idea. We > could ship a generic preferences window to customize the Debian session > when running without Gnome or KDE. Such a preferences window would be nice. In fact I've already a fast-hacked version running here, which get the information it is needing basicly by placing a file ----------------------------- #!/usr/sbin/install-menu compat="menu-1" !include menu.h supported wm= $title "=" $command "\n" endsupported startmenu= "\n" endmenu= "\n" submenutitle= "\n" genmenu= "wmanagerc" rootprefix="/etc/X11/wmanagerc/" userprefix="/.wmanagerc/" treewalk="c(m)" -------------------------------- into /etc/menu-methods > > So instead of using a system that works and can do what we need > > (with the exception of generating KDE-menus, though I do not see > > the fault in our system here), we should adopt another metadata > > not even able to describe the things we already have and are used? > > This is interesting: could you please make some example of metadata > information that can be represented with the current format and cannot > be represented by the Desktop Menu Specification found at > freedesktop.org? I've as said not found a possibility to specify window managers. As it is quite complex (and uses the word "desktop" on places totally confusing me), I could not determine, if it has a generic way to add arbitrary meta information. (Consider things currently supported by the menu-system, like the possibility to tell a program to be started in a terminal- emulator and specifing prefered title or geometry. (with an easy way the administrator can change the effect of such statements), or the possibility to package additional fvwm-modules, so that they end up in fvwm's modules-menu like those provided by the stock package) Hochachtungsvoll, Bernhard R. Link -- Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
