Re: Debian menu system update
On Thu, 2003-05-29 at 14:12, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> I am not too sure I want this... One of the great things about our menu
> system is that it complies with a rather logical policy - menus are not
> overly nested.
That's an independent issue from switching to the .desktop format. The
.desktop menu entries don't force you to use a particular menu layout.
They provide hints, which a menu system can use if it chooses.
> I don't know how is the .desktop format, but I understand
> it is just that - a format.
Yes.
> I really doubt it provides the coherency of
> Debian's menu system
It doesn't; the Desktop Menu Specification does that:
http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu/draft/menu-spec/menu-spec.html
> - Imagine, for example, a developer files his
> browser in Apps/Browsers instead of Apps/Net - What can we do about it?
Um, patch it, just like we do for other upstream things we want to
change? Alternatively we can override it using a Menu file, once we
have the Desktop Menu Specification implemented.
> Menu systems, IMHO, are the task of a distribution - a way to organize a
> collection of software.
Yes, it is our task to make it *consistent*. It shouldn't be our task
to write menu entries from scratch, when upstreams can (and are) taking
on the task. Our menu system should accept .desktop files, and ideally
process them natively.
The next step is to migrate to the Desktop Menu Specification. This is
still in the process of being adopted by GNOME and KDE. We will need to
rewrite our menu-methods to process the .menu files.
After that, our user experience with popular desktops should be much
more consistent, and it will be less work to integrate new software into
Debian (since upstreams will be adopting .desktop), and other
distributors will benefit from the .desktop files Debian developers
write.
A Debian-specific menu system is the entirely wrong way to go.
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