* Petter Reinholdtsen <p...@hungry.com> [100214 10:45]:
> If we are to believe
> <URL: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Development/Howto/MenuMigrationToXDG >,
> it is possible to migrate from Debian menu files to XDG desktop files
> and still get working and useful menus for the following window
> managers: WindowMaker, fvwm2, icewm, blackbox, fluxbox, openbox,
> xfce4, openbox3 (and probably more if we want to extend the xdg_menu
> script. The migration can also be done while keeping the menues
> useful and working in the migration period.
>
> Personally, I believe this is a good idea, as the current situation
> with two partly integrated menu systems is confusing for both
> maintainers and users.
I think the biggest problem here is not the technical ones, but rather
the policy ones.
I guess the biggest things to be done first are (and those are useful
even when we keep the good old working Debian menu system, so there is
no excuse it getting those done first):
- documentation
Given how important those files are already for many people, the
level of documentation is frightening. Please make sure there
is documentation both for developers and users available. Last time
I looked some years ago the only documentation was for menu
implementors and totally useless otherwise as it only make sense
when thinking about writing a menu yourself and even then not much
(like referencing directories by symbolic names, and not telling which
directory it actually is you need to put things in).
I hope there is much better out there now, but this information also
needs to be prominently pointed/linked to so that it can be found.
- policy
As far as I can see there is not even a Debian policy for .desktop files
yet. I think it is great if all menu look alike, but I also want every
single Xt/Xaw program installed in the menu by default. And if you
want the menus for the more lightweight environments to only use the
.desktop files, many other people will want that, too.
But does everyone wants that? I think there are same tags, but where are
the rules what program has which of those tags? (And back to the last
point, where is the documentation on how to use those?).
So: get some Debian policy files for .desktop files first. That is
needed without or without ditching the Debian menu. It might be mostly
refering to some foreign policy, but I guess at least the use of tags
describing in which menus which item will appear will need some
additional rules.
And then there is of course also functionality. What to do with plugins for
window managers (some were stored this way). Can the window-manager
switching (or call it desktop-environment switching if you insist on
naming only the window managing part of a window manager window manager)
at runtime still implemented. And so on and so forth...
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
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