For discussion: Gnome, KDE, and XFCE are the the top three desktops used in debian and cover most users of desktops in debian.
They all use xdg .desktop-based menus as their main menu. xdg .desktop-based menus are not covered by policy. This means some maintainers refuse to use them (see bug #478954 and #478916). The main menu (meaning the primary menu used for program selection; I don't include quick access menus which have a small selection of often used programs) should either be the debian-menu or all packages which are supposed to have menu entires should also be required to supply .desktop files. Having a dual-menu scheme in policy is ugly. Currently the debian-menu is a submenu of the main menu, called 'Debian'. Having the main menu, where users, especially new users, expect to find all their programs not be canonical is also ugly. Having the canonical menu as a submenu (currently the case) means the programs are at least available but you have to know to look there when you can't find it in the main menu, and looking in two places to find a program is a pain. You could always look in the debian menu always, but then why have the main menu? menu-xdg provides the 'Debian' menu (or main menu if that is the choice debian makes) from debian-menu entries as an xdg-compliant menu and entries. desktops that want to have .desktop entries for specific programs ought to be responsible for creating the code that merges the debian main menu with their main menu (e.g. in menu-xdg), rather than forcing every other application in debian to do their work for them. Regards, Daniel -- And that's my crabbing done for the day. Got it out of the way early, now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or strangle cute bunnies or something. -- Michael Devore GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C http://gnupg.org No more sea shells: Daniel's Weblog http://cshore.wordpress.com
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