Re: [desktop] why kde and gnome's menu situation sucks
On 10/25/2002 1:23 AM, Miles Bader at miles@lsi.nec.co.jp wrote:
> Luke Seubert <ls.maillist@verizon.net> writes:
>> However, the Basic Menu needs to be kept utterly simple, otherwise, it
>> defeats the purpose of such a menu in the first place.
>
> Are `utterly simple' and `auto-generated acording to the installed
> packages' incompatible?
>
No. You are right. The "utterly simple" menus would be a subset of the
"everything AND the kitchen sink" menu based upon installed packages.
> Even if the set of apps in a Basic Menu were hand-tailored (as may be
> necessary), it should at least automatically remove anything that isn't
> installed.
>
Agreed.
> Anyway, I think of a Basic Menu as being more like a filter through
> which the normal menus are passed, rather than a totally separate thing.
>
I have no problem with that idea per se. However, active, on-the-fly
filtering may slow down the responsiveness of the menu. To avoid this, it
may be necessary to filter the "everything AND the kitchen sink" menu and
use the results to create an 'utterly simple' menu - a separate .desktop
file. Of course, the big menu would remain, and be accessible as an option.
I don't know if this would be necessary or not. That is a technical concern
that can be decided once we reach that bridge.
> C1. `If there are several apps of type X installed, and one of them is a
> "native" application for the currently running windowing environment
> (e.g. Gnome or KDE), then only present that one, and hide the others'
>
> C2. If an app isn't in the Apps-for-Dummies list, hide it.
>
> I don't know if a Basic Menu generated by such a tree-filtering approach
> (plus things like structure collapsing for sparse submenus) would be
> good enough, but on the other hand, it may be, and it would certainly
> make maintenance a lot easier.
>
I like this line of reasoning. Maybe active filtering could solve all our
problems. It would certainly be cleaner than having multiple .desktop files
lying around with names like .basic, .intermediate, .advanced, .custom,
.default
Cheers,
Luke Seubert
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