On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 10:24:42PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote: > Hi, > > well, waiting more than five weeks for an answer to a question > that at least I would regard as urgent seems to show enough > patience. The only conclulsion I could draw is that menu is > not really maintained any more. I'm particularly interested > in this question because if this is the case I see no need > to continue supporting menu in cdd-dev / cdd-common tools. > Instead we would switch to freedesktop.org exclusively which > would be a shame because we would lose several window managers > that do not support this format - but it makes no sense to > support stuff which is not documented and requests for > documentation remain unanswered. It is not the only conclusion you could draw. > Bill, I just noticed that I forgot to CC you in my previous > mail which might lead to the fact that you missed my question > because you are not reading debian-devel. While this is > my fault I would suggest you should watch possible responses > of your announcements in the archive. Indeed another conclusion you just drawn was that I never actually received your email. I am not subscribed to debian-devel, and I did not post to that list. Instead I posted to debian-devel-announce. My email ended in debian-devel for reasons I did not anticipate. I will resend it to debian-devel-announce. Generally, if you want to reach me, please email me directly. On the other hand, I am currently lacking a menu developer with a good understanding of C++, which delays the resolution of some bugs, but if you just want to help me with menu QA, you are welcome too. > >On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Bill Allombert wrote: > > > >>Others changes: > >>=============== > >> > >>-- Menu support a new format called "menu-2" since 8 years. > > > >Uhmmm, this is one of the strangest sentences I read on this list this > >year. At which time scale you would regard eight years old as new (at > >least in the world of computers)? I would rather pronounce: > > > > The menu format that is currently used by nearly every package > > was obsolated by the menu-2 format two years ago because the > > information about was so perfectly hidden that nobody really > > noticed. menu-1 format is not obsoleted. I was not the menu maintainer 8 years ago (I was not even a Debian developer). Whatever plans Joost had for the menu-2 format, I don't know. Until recently I thought the menu-2 format only applied to menu-methods, but I discovered I was wrong, so I decided to announce it. > >I base my assumption that nobody really noticed on the fact that > > > > grep "menu-2" /usr/share/menu/* > > > >revealed no result on my machine. There must be a first time for everything. But try grep "menu-2" /etc/menu-methods/* > >>In this > >>format lines break are not significant, but logical lines end by a > >>semi-comma: > >> > >>This is an example: > >> > >>!C menu-2 > >>?package(pari-gp): > >> section="Applications/Science/Mathematics" > >> needs="text" > >> title="PARI/GP" > >> command="gp" > >>; > >> > >>I do not have strong opinion about this format, but feel free to use it. > > > >Well, the strongest prove that you are not alone is that neither > >debian-policy mentions it (see #447389), nor dh-make creates menu-2 > >templates (see #447390) nor lintian suggests this format (see #447391). > >But how should we interpret the sentence below: I don't see how it is relevant to debian-policy or dh-make. > >>Since even potato support menu-2, there are no upgrade or backport > >>issue, however this might break the lintian code to parse menu file. > >> > >>menu-2 is also available for menu-methods, through the definition > >>compat="menu-2". I highly recommend its use for menu-methods. > > > >So you highly recommend something you have no feelings about? I have no feeling about using menu-2 for menu file, but I recommend it for menu-methods. > >What is the sense of inventing a format and not providing any > >information about it. Even grepping through /usr/share/doc/menu/html > >revealed only some notes amout menu-2 but no code example locked > >like above. The manual claims to describe menu format menu-2 > >but considering that the code uses backspace '\' which should be > >necessary according to the information above and given that the > >line "!C menu-2" is mandatory as well as the final semicolon > >in contrast to the statement of /usr/share/doc/menu/html/ch1.html > >that this document describes the menu-2.0 format this is just > >not the case (and I should probably a file against the menu > >package about this). Thanks for explaining to this list all the trouble I had to get through before discovering menu-2. > >So how could you expect developers to adopt a new format if there > >is no information about it? By posting to debian-devel-announce. > >>Imagine a large red swirl here. > > > >I have to admit that my brain turned in a multi colored huge > >swirl when I finaly was pointed to this information which was > >hidden in the very end of a long mail that was posted to > >debian-devel-announce (but got archived on debian-devel strangely > >enough). Apparently one is not allowed to post a followup to a previous debian-devel-announce post, even if it is two month old. I did not anticipated that. > >After settling down with this I wonder whether you could easily > >turn a menu-1 format file into a menu-2 format file by just > >wrapping it i between > > > > !C menu-2 > > <contents of old file> > > ; > > > >or is there some other magic? Assuming your menu-1 file has a single entry, this is sufficient. (Else you obviously need one ';' for each entry). Cheers, Bill.
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