Dear developers, This is a status update for the Debian Menu transition.
1) About 25% of menu files had been updated to the new menu section.
This is promising, but unfortunately, only about 25% of menu files
in removed/split sections have been updated, so there is still a lot of
packages to change before the menus look good again.
2) Some common mistakes to avoid:
- Do not put menu entries _directly_ under Applications/Science,
Applications/System and Applications/Network, but in one of
their subsections.
- The longtitle need to be a valid menu entry if displayed alone,
and must identify uniquely the program. For that reason, it is
usually best if it includes the program name at the start, though
acronyms can be expanded.
- Even if your menu entry section still exist in the new hierarchy,
maybe your menu entry would be better in one of the newly added
section, e.g. Applications/Office or Applications/Video.
3) menu 2.1.36 includes menu sections translations for Basque,
Bulgarian, French, Gujarati, Nepali, Portuguese, Tamil, Thai and
Vietnamese. Thanks goes to the translators and Christian Perrier.
4) Lintian has been updated for the new structure [0]. Thanks goes to
Russ Allbery.
[0] http://lintian.debian.org/reports/Tmenu-item-creates-new-section.html
5) We decided to put clocks in Games/Toys because most of them are
mostly eye-candy.
If you did not migrate to the new structure already:
====================================================
What you should do:
===================
Look up the new hierarchy in the menu manual [1] and update your
menu files to use the new hierarchy. The manual include example packages
for each sections. A summary of change is provided below. If you are
not sure where to put your menu entry, please send an email to the
debian-policy list.
[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/ch3.html#s3.5
Thanks in advance with your effort in carrying out this transition.
REMOVED SECTIONS
Apps/Tools
Games/Sports
Screen/Root-window
SPLIT SECTIONS:
Apps/Net [now Applications/Network]
Apps/Science [now Applications/Science]
Apps/System [now Applications/System]
NEW SECTIONS
Applications
Accessibility [new]
File Management [new]
Mobile Devices [new]
Network
Network/Communication [new]
Network/File Transfer [new]
Network/Monitoring [new]
Network/Web Browsing [new]
Network/Web News [new]
Office [new]
Project Management [new]
Science
Science/Astronomy [new]
Science/Biology [new]
Science/Chemistry [new]
Science/Data Analysis [new]
Science/Engineering [new]
Science/Geoscience [new]
Science/Medicine [new]
Science/Physics [new]
Science/Social [new]
System
System/Hardware [new]
System/Monitoring [new]
System/Package Management [new]
System/Security [new]
TV and Radio [new]
Video [new]
Web Development [new]
Games
Tools [new]
Window Maker [new]
RENAMED SECTIONS
Applications [was:Apps]
Amateur Radio [was:Hamradio]
Data Management [was:Databases]
Network [was:Net]
Science
Science/Electronics [was:Technical]
Science/Mathematics [was:Math]
System
System/Administration [was:Admin]
System/Language Environment [was:Language-Environment]
Terminal Emulators [was:XShells]
Games
Action [was:Arcade]
Blocks [was:Tetris-like]
Screen
Saving [was:Save]
Locking [was:Lock]
Window Managers [was:WindowManagers]
FVWM Modules [was:WindowManagers/Modules]
Older transitions:
===================
1) /usr/lib/menu-> /usr/share/menu
There are still 174 packages with menu entries in /usr/lib/menu.
Please fix them. I will consider such packages NMU candidates.
2) /usr/sbin/su-to-root -> /usr/bin/su-to-root
Actually, please just use "su-to-root". There is no need to
hard-code the path.
3) /usr/sbin/install-menu -> /usr/bin/install-menu
There are still 22 packages using #! /usr/sbin/install-menu.
Please change to #! /usr/bin/install-menu
Others changes:
===============
-- Use this update as an opportunity to improve the title and the longtitle.
In particular, please capitalize them properly.
Translations of title and longtitle will be available if we reach a
sufficiently high quality.
-- Menu support a new format called "menu-2" since 8 years. In this
format lines break are not significant, but logical lines end by a
semi-comma:
This is an example:
!C menu-2
?package(pari-gp):
section="Applications/Science/Mathematics"
needs="text"
title="PARI/GP"
command="gp"
;
I do not have strong opinion about this format, but feel free to use it.
Since even potato support menu-2, there are no upgrade or backport
issue, however this might break the lintian code to parse menu file.
menu-2 is also available for menu-methods, through the definition
compat="menu-2". I highly recommend its use for menu-methods.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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