Hi, Introduction and motivation:
I'm seeking some discussion regarding adding extra menus for specific "niche" sub-categories of programs, such as Electronic design applications, Hamradio etc.. There exists a hamradiomenus package which adds a "Ham Radio" menu, and as a developer and user of Electronic CAD packages, would like to see a similar "Electronics" menu. None of the main XDG menu categories actually fit this sort of application, and the spec conflictingly says not to list categories which aren't applicable, and that a package should list one of the main categories. In gEDA, the .desktop files list "Electronics" and "Engineering" (both of which are sub-categories), and without an additional XML file describing a new menu, these applications will appear under "Others" under gnome, or lost+found under KDE. My proposed package: Description: Menu for Electronics applications This package crates an "Electronics" submenu with icon for GNOME, KDE and other XDG menu-spec compliant desktop environments. dpkg-query -L electronics-menu (snipped non file output) /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/categories/applications-electronics.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/categories/applications-electronics.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/categories/applications-electronics.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/categories/applications-electronics.svg /usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/categories/applications-electronics.png /usr/share/doc/electronics-menu/copyright /usr/share/doc/electronics-menu/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/desktop-directories/Electronics.directory /etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/electronics.menu This is similar to the "hamradiomenus" package, although I'm shipping a more complete theme set of sized icons, rather than a single pixmap. The rejection: Hi Maintainer, rejected, for now, as I disagree with an own package just for two simple files (plus some graphics). Any reason why that doesnt go into menu? That would be the more logical place for it, IMO. -- bye Joerg My reply: There was precedent, in the "hamradiomenus" package upon which the idea for this package was based. Since the "Electronics" category in .desktop files is only officially a subcategory in the XDG menu specification, the intention was that this package would be installed at the user's preference. (Probably suggested by packages which provide .desktop files falling into the "Electronics" category). The "menu" package doesn't seem to be the right place for this, as "menu" appears to deal specifically with the Debian menu system, not the XDG menus. The nearest correct packages appear to be "gnome-menus" and "kdelibs-data" which provide the default Gnome and KDE menu files: /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu /etc/xdg/menus/kde-applications.menu It doesn't seem beneficial to duplicate the registration of the menu in two packages, certainly as the installed icons would clash. Using either of these would also stop it working with any other XDG desktops. (ROX?.. I don't know if that is Debian packaged or not). This leads me to suspect that we do need it to be in some separate package, even if it could be combined with others of a similar ilk. Since the same "upstream" (me) sources for this menu and icons may be used in different distributions, I'd make the case that a separate package is appropriate here, since others may wish to use the same shared data without dragging it out of a Debian specific package. Joerg's reply: """ This sounds like some kind of xdg-extra-menus package providing menus like the electronics and hamradio one. Not a single package for every 5kb menu package. """ I then sought advice from Joerg on IRC (a summary): Ganneff: they are small, so disk space is not an issue. so maybe have a way to let a user enable extra menus, in case he wants them. pcjc2: I suspect in the cases of ham radio and electronics, the clashing possibilities are low.. but if the user wanted to install an "Engineering" menu then you'd get packages listed in both Electronics and Engineering menus Ganneff: if you provide a small app for that than the user could ven chose on their own, not an admin for them. Ganneff: you can have a app that symlinks menus into the users ~. iirc there is a place within that ~ for own menu additions? pcjc2: ~/.config/menus I think Ganneff: and if not - it would be a script for the admin to enable/disable the menus for the whole machine Ganneff: so you install them all in /somewhere, admin runs script, that symlinks the wanted menus to /wherever Ganneff: that gives them only the menus they want and us not a trillion of 5k packages. (which ftpteam *really* dislikes). pcjc2: I'm basically an upstream on gEDA, PCB and gerbv, all of which need an Electronics menu pcjc2: We need collaboration with hamradiomenus and any others which would be covered under this (EDIT.. we are talking about two so far, not 1 trillion) pcjc2: Are you going to delete hamradiomenus from the dist, and tell them to fix theirs too? (If not.. I don't see how there is any incentive for them to help with this) Ganneff: im not deleting it, but strongly encourage to move it into the generics menu package, as soon as that starts to live Summary (and my thoughts): Use case... user "apt-get install geda", and finds their electronics applications under "Electronics". Joerg is advocating creating a package "xdg-extra-menus" to gather any possible extra menus which could be installed by the user. I'm concerned about category clashes (duplication of apps), and (IMO) the best way to resolve this is to apt-get remove electronics-menu or engineering-menu (hypothetical) which each deal with one category each, and are suggested by other packages as appropriate. Joerg's suggestion is to install all categories from a single package then provide an application to copy them into /etc/xdg/menus from an admin program (or ~/.config/menus/) for the user-specific configuration case. "pusling" on IRC suggested looking at the a2enmod scripts for examples of how to do this). I am however quite concerned about how applications will by default install where they can be found in menus. No new user will know to run whatever script is required to enable a particular menu, meaning at the they should probably be shipped enabled (they only show if an application has this category anyway). In this case, where applications fall into multiple categories, they will appear multiple times. Will all apps desiring a category specified in "xdg-extra-menus" have to depend on it being installed, or will it be installed by default with the desktop? Should we call it "xdg-..." this isn't from the xdg people.. does that break name-spacing, or mislead about its origins? As an upstream developer for gEDA Electronics CAD software, I don't think that I can create or maintain this... I just know that our users complain about not being able to find our software, and was hoping to provide a solution. Comments? -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
