New Menu category Applictions/Multimedia

Am Montag 07 Dezember 2009 04:35:30 schrieb Paul Wise:
> On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 3:34 AM, Andreas Marschke <xxtjaxx RemoveThis @googlemail.com>
wrote:
> > I'm hereby proposing an additional Category for this list of such
> > applications called Multimedia. This defines clearer what they are.
>
> Sounds reasonable to me, this would bring the Debian menu closer to
> the FreeDesktop menu, which has AudioVideo and more specific
> sub-categories. I'd suggest filing a bug on the menu package and maybe
> lintian once menu is added.
I haven't had the freedesktop.org in mind at the time of writing it but yes it
is infact a reason to do this as well.
The bug is filed and should be open for broader discussion soon.

Should I file the lintian bug too? Or will this have to wait till the fix is
gone into menu?

> Please note that the Debian menu is not shown by Debian GNOME by
> default. IIRC LXDE doesn't support it either.
Is this something specific to the gnome/lxde setup in Debian? If so should we
file a bug against it?
I discovered this in KDE as well as fluxbox .


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On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:50 AM, Andreas Marschke
<xxtjaxx.TakeThisOut@googlemail.com> wrote:

> I haven't had the freedesktop.org in mind at the time of writing it but yes it
> is infact a reason to do this as well.
> The bug is filed and should be open for broader discussion soon.

You should have chosen wishlist severity for the bug (#559895) btw,
please fix that:

http://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control

> Should I file the lintian bug too? Or will this have to wait till the fix is
> gone into menu?

Wait until menu has changed.

Thinking about it a bit more, the lintian one probably isn't needed
unless the old categories are to go away.

>> Please note that the Debian menu is not shown by Debian GNOME by
>> default. IIRC LXDE doesn't support it either.
>
> Is this something specific to the gnome/lxde setup in Debian? If so should we
> file a bug  against it?
> I discovered this in KDE as well as fluxbox .

Upstream desktops only support the FreeDesktop menu, GNOME in Debian
supports the Debian menu but has it turned off by default. You'll have
to check the mailing list archives for the actual rationale, but I
think it was because users were getting confused by two menus and
making Debian more like other distros.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/threads.html#00107

LXDE is a new desktop I guess the maintainers have not yet had time to
add support for the Debian menu (see #517190 for more). Here is a
thread about it too:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/02/thrd2.html#00809

I also heard rumblings that the KDE maintainers were going to remove
the Debian menu too.

Personally I think we should have gotten rid of the Debian menu years
ago, I don't think my opinion is shared by many people in Debian
though.

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> Personally I think we should have gotten rid of the Debian menu years
> ago, I don't think my opinion is shared by many people in Debian
> though.
>

It is truely kind of doubled effort to have the debian menu extra to the actual
menu. The question is who will step forward and propose the removal?

We can make a new thread for this.


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I demand that Andreas Marschke may or may not have written...

>> Personally I think we should have gotten rid of the Debian menu years
>> ago, I don't think my opinion is shared by many people in Debian though.

> It is truly kind of doubled effort to have the debian menu extra to the
> actual menu. The question is who will step forward and propose the removal?

Not me, given that I use, and plan to continue using, it...

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On Tue, Dec 08 2009, Andreas Marschke wrote:

>> Personally I think we should have gotten rid of the Debian menu years
>> ago, I don't think my opinion is shared by many people in Debian
>> though.
>>
>
> It is truely kind of doubled effort to have the debian menu extra to
> the actual menu. The question is who will step forward and propose the
> removal?

Whoever does the work to implement the replacement menu
infrastructure in all the places that the Debian menu is
implemented. And also helps flush out all the entries missing from the
xdg menu which are in the Debian one.

> We can make a new thread for this.

manoj
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Manoj Srivastava <srivasta RemoveThis @debian.org> writes:

> Whoever does the work to implement the replacement menu
> infrastructure in all the places that the Debian menu is
> implemented. And also helps flush out all the entries missing from the
> xdg menu which are in the Debian one.

I think this would be excellent work for someone to do, to mention. But
it is a fair amount of work, since it probably (at least in the short run)
requires writing a converter that writes Debian menu files based on XDG
desktop files for those packages that implement the Debian menu (such as
fvwm). Either that, or teaching those packages how to read desktop files,
but I suspect generating menu files would be easier.

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Andreas Marschke <xxtjaxx.DeleteThis@googlemail.com> wrote:

>> Personally I think we should have gotten rid of the Debian menu years
>> ago, I don't think my opinion is shared by many people in Debian
>> though.
>>
>
> It is truely kind of doubled effort to have the debian menu extra to the actual
> menu. The question is who will step forward and propose the removal?
>
> We can make a new thread for this.

Please read the archives. That has been discussed over and over. By the
way, one thing you'll learn is to use terms that everyone understands
without problems, and that not everyone is using a "Desktop
envirnoment". In my window manager, there's only one menu, and that's
the Debian one.

Regards, Frank

--
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Debian Developer (TeXLive)
VCD Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg, ADFC Miltenberg
B90/Grüne KV Miltenberg


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On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 3:51 AM, Frank Küster <frank DeleteThis @debian.org> wrote:

> Please read the archives. That has been discussed over and over.  By the
> way, one thing you'll learn is to use terms that everyone understands
> without problems, and that not everyone is using a "Desktop
> envirnoment".  In my window manager, there's only one menu, and that's
> the Debian one.

Which window manager is that?

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[Frank Küster]
> By the way, one thing you'll learn is to use terms that everyone
> understands without problems, and that not everyone is using a
> "Desktop envirnoment". In my window manager, there's only one menu,
> and that's the Debian one.

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.

Happy hacking,
--
Petter Reinholdtsen


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* Petter Reinholdtsen <pere.RemoveThis@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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On 14/02/2010 10:44, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> 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.

For what I remember, the problem is not technical (the format of entry
menu). As said before, converters can be wrote if required.
The main objection is that gnome/kde maintainers do not want to see
all installed applications in their FreeDesktop menu.
There have been long discussions about this. The current status-quo is
that the Debian menu has (should have) all software installed on the
machine whereas FreeDesktop menu used by gnome has only a subset. It
also has a sub-menu with the Debian menu (hidden by default if I
remember correctly).

Personally, I prefer the Debian menu because I can find here all
software on my machine. I use the menu the find a application.
Applications I often use have a icon, so the Gnome selection is useless
for me. I understand that others can use the menu differently.

In any case, merging the Debian menu and the FreeDesktop menu will
require to take some non-technical decisions and I think it will be
very difficult.

Regards,
Vincent

> Happy hacking,


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On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 09:15:36PM +0100, Vincent Danjean wrote:
> The main objection is that gnome/kde maintainers do not want to see
> all installed applications in their FreeDesktop menu.
> ...
> Personally, I prefer the Debian menu because I can find here all
> software on my machine. I use the menu the find a application.
> Applications I often use have a icon, so the Gnome selection is useless
> for me. I understand that others can use the menu differently.

IMHO the best solution to this (unavoidable) problem is to enable a
configuration feature controled by some kind of priority tag in the
desktop files. This should say something like "display me on Gnome",
"display me on KDE", ... and the user should be presented with a
configuration option what menu entry priority he wants to see. IMHO the
default configuration on Debian should be set to all to comply with the
original menu behaviour.

And yes, I'm aware that this is a solution which requires a lot of work
and more discussion than just this raw thought.

Kind regards

Andreas.

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On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 10:36 PM, Darren Salt
<linux DeleteThis @youmustbejoking.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>> The freedesktop.org specification does not impose a layout. You are
>> probably talking about the KDE, GNOME or Xfce menu.
>
> Hmm? I was under the impression that they all included the same
> auto-generated file...

He is referring to the fact that in GNOME at least, the FDO menu
structure is dynamically created based on what you have installed at
the time. If you have hundreds of games from different genres, the
games menu will be a bunch of submenus, but if you have only a few, it
will have no sub-menus. That said, there are certainly FDO menu
implementations that do not do this, E17 with the Illume theme on
OpenMoko comes to mind. I installed sgt-puzzles there and did not get
a games sub-menu.

> No; it's more that packages which add a *lot* of menu items should add a
> submenu for them. Alternatively, some further subdivision by type (not
> necessarily making the menu tree deeper, though).

That is certainly possible, since there are at least 3 packages in
Debian that extend the FDO menu in some way (education-menus,
extra-xdg-menus, islamic-menus and possibly moblin-menus).

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