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Re: Debian menu



On Thu, Jun 10, 1999 at 01:53:55PM -0300, Lalo Martins wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 10, 1999 at 04:35:51PM +0100, Steve Haslam wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 10, 1999 at 12:22:39PM -0300, Lalo Martins wrote:
> > > I somehow managed to lose my Debian submenu. How do panel build
> > > it to begin with? How can I get it back? Could you please
> > > include whatever you answer me with the package (perhaps
> > > /usr/doc/README.Debian)?
> > 
> > Right-click the gnome foot icon and choose "Properties..."
> 
> Thanks :-) shouldn't it be on by default?

It should- when I rationalised the packaging, the menu method was renamed to
/etc/menu-methods/gnome-panel, whereas gnome-panel was still looking for
/etc/menu-methods/gnome. So the latest gnome-core has a ptach to look for
the right thing.

> > The Debian menu will become the default instead of the GNOME menu in a
> > future release (this may be controversial :}).
> 
> Ok, I'd not bother you with my opinions, but I'm building a
> GNOME-based sollution here so I have strong points about that
> :-)

Well, it's not set in stone, and on reflection I ought to mention changes
like this first... hence I'm copying debian-gtk-gnome so other people can ad
input here...

> 1st, this could only be really good if the menu method had some
> way of matching icons to the entries. The way things are today,
> the Debian menu is uglier than the GNOME menu, so less
> user-friendly in one aspect at least.

Istr there is a way of including icons in the Debian menus- although only
one or two entries actually do this. Perhaps an effort to get mini-icons
made and put into packages would be good here?

> 2nd, with few exceptions (Netscape, xterm) people can trust that
> stuff in the GNOME menu is GNOME or at least work well with
> GNOME. Having the Debian menu as a submenu is a plus here IMHO.
> 
> However, you probably aren't doing this without some thinking.
> If, given my 2 arguments, you're still for it, I will support
> you in your decision [and just switch back to the old default
> here ;-) ].

The GNOME system menu seems to have one feature that I consider inexcusable-
it has choices for programs that are not necessarily installed, and if the
user chooses something that sounds interesting, they may be sitting around
waiting for it to appear whereas in actual fact gnome-panel has printed
"foo: command not found" to ~/.gnome-errors (and how many people keep an eye
on that?).

(Thinking as I write, I'm sure the panel menu has a feature for checking for
things before it puts them on the menu- isn't that what the TryExec option
is? But even so, that has to be done whenever the menu is built by
gnome-panel, rather than when packages are installed/uninstalled, and could
be quite expensive over, for example, NFS.)

Furthermore, the Debian menu produces a much more comprehensive list of
things that are on the system. I agree that the Debian menu is more cryptic,
and not as attractive, but these things can be improved.

I'm open to suggestions wand welcome to hear discussion on this point, as
always.

HTH

SRH
-- 
Steve Haslam, Validation Engineer, ARM Ltd, Cambridge UK     +44-1223-400677
steve.haslam@arm.com       steve@arise.demon.co.uk        araqnid@debian.org
we see a deadly sin in every home, on every street corner.
and we tolerate it because it's commonplace. it's trivial.

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