Re: adding desktop files to misc packages
Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> wrote:
> Le mercredi 25 juillet 2007 à 16:17 -0400, Marvin Renich a écrit :
>> My original message was specifically concerned with graphical apps. I'm
>> not sure which console apps should be displayed; for the most part, I
>> think the Debian maintainer should decide whether it deserves to be
>> displayed by default.
>
> I still disagree. The policy should enforce detailed tagging that allows
> window managers and menu systems maintainers to filter out entries they
> don't want to display.
ACK
>> Window managers *definitely* should be displayed. If I went to the
>> trouble of installing sawfish in addition to metacity, I would like to
>> be able to use both. Yes, from the menu.
>
> Sorry, but the menu is not a holdall where we put all functionality that
> we don't know where to put without thinking a few minutes.
>
> A window manager choice has nothing to do in an application menu, as it
> is not an application. This is a matter for a configuration tool,
> whatever form it takes.
The Debian menu has more Categories than just applications. In
particular, it has a category for window managers.
If you desktop environment guys want to go a different way and hide this
category (and instead allow for window manager switching somewhere else,
like some control center) that's fine. But that doesn't say that window
managers shouldn't have a menu file, or .desktop if that is going to be
its successor.
>> > Why shouldn't we attempt to make menus usable?
>>
>> I didn't say we should not make them usable, I said we should not try to
>> make them more usable *by reducing access to less frequently used apps*.
>
> As things are, even with the best possible menu system one can imagine,
> you won't manage to make a menu with 500 entries as usable as one with
> 100.
Could you give guidelines how a maintainer of an application should
classify their app, and how Gnome would decide which classes to hide?
>> > Guess what, toolbars are not used by a good share of users.
>
>> Also, my experience is that a good share of less-technically-oriented-
>> but-comfortable-using-a-computer users actually do use toolbars.
>
> These affirmations are not contradictory. I don't deny that many users
> make use of their toolbar, but I think we should keep the menu usable
> for users who don't.
I don't use a toolbar, but for me "usable" means that everything is
there...
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
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