On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 12:54:42PM -0700, Bruce Sass wrote: > On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Ben Burton wrote: > > > > > > Point was, it is not necessary to convert Debian to accomplish what > > > the GenericName proposal wants. IMO it would be better to have KDE > > > improve its menu handling... integrate with the existing system; and > > > have an RMB on an item pop up a menu with actions for viewing the apps > > > docs, looking at the dpkg and apt views of the package the app comes > > > from, looking at the docs of the package, etc. > > > > There are two separate discussions here. > > > > 1) Adding genericname to the current menu system; > > 2) Replacing the current menu system with .desktop files. > > > > Chris is not suggesting (2) simply as an implementation of (1), but > > rather as an extension that also allows for translations and other > > goodies that come with .desktop files. > > I said I liked it... but who aside from the current freedesktop > standard users gain anything? Also, I have noticed improvements in > menu snappiness and kbuildsycoca run times when I remove all the > non-english translations from KDE's files (don't think I've bothered > yet with KDE-3.1 though). Other users stand to gain a lot more translations if the menu entries were pushed upstream, as well as uniformity across distributions. However, as you comment an english speaker probably wouldn't like that. ;) Personally I don't notice any slowdown. > > Btw, regarding (1), I certainly don't want menu-methods to look up > > manpages to get genericnames. Not only is it an ugly solution but it's > > not at all clear how it will extract this generic name - even just the > > manpage title is generally too long and too specific, and is not > > tailored for menu entries. > > Huh. Read it again, RMB = Right Mouse Button. > > > As for (1), i.e., just adding a genericname field to the current system: > > this is completely painless. If a menu-method is not updated, nothing > > will break (and indeed some menu-methods won't be updated since they > > won't use genericnames). If a menu entry is not updated, nothing will > > break. If a window manager doesn't support or doesn't want to support > > genericnames then they don't have to. > > > > And moreover it's quite simple to implement. Menu-methods that do want > > to use genericnames will find it a simple addition (e.g., the KDE > > menu-methods would just write the extra field to the generated .desktop > > file). > > So what is stopping Debian's KDE from using the menu system to > generate all of its menu? The fact that the KDE maintainers want KDE to look uniform across distributions and support more than just English. Also KDE's menu is native .desktop format so it would require rewriting it as well for a negative benefit. Separating out the Debian menu like Gnome does it might be a good idea but it used to be that way in KDE and was changed for some, probably good, reason. Chris
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