Re: Debian apps in GNOME menu
Torsten Landschoff <t.landschoff@gmx.net> writes:
> Right. I also like the Debian menu system for being consistent and finding
> everything in there. It works well for simple text and no translation.
Translation worked fine for me when I tried it. If it didn't work for
you, it was either operator error or a bug. If the latter, it should
have been reported.
> I read all the docs and even part of the source. Why? I wanted to include
> an icon for Communicator in the ICafe I installed Debian in. I tried for
> hours and failed because of some obscure problem when running update-menus.
Well, I had no such problems. In fact, I was able to figure out how
to create my own menu entries, with icons and everything, almost
immediately when I first tried Debian. It took me a few days to do
the same with CDE and I never succeeded with RH's menu system, though
I tried for days. Haven't got a clue how to create a menu item in
Gnome, though I confess I haven't looked very hard.
> Furthermore you do not need to run update-menus or something like that if
> you are installing something into the Gnome menus.
Not a very interesting fact to me, since I don't use Gnome. I don't
even particularly like Gnome. I do like GTK+, and I maintain Orbit
for Debian because I'm interested in CORBA (not Gnome).
If you want to make a menu system that is windowmanager independent
(and isn't even limited to windowmanagers -- I've been contempating a
menu-method for emacs), you'll *need* something like update-menus.
Period. Or you'll need to rewrite all existing programs, and all new
programs that might appear, to use your common format. Don't hold
your breath. :-)
> I am the administrator in a pc lab of our university. We have users
> from Finland, Brazil, Germany, Portugal and UK. Now tell me how to
> get the possibility to have each of them select the language he wants
> at runtime!?
Run update-menus.
> menu will translate menus when generating the system wide menu
> files.
It will also generate menus for an individual user. Run it as that
user.
I agree, it could be improved. But I think that we're better off
improving it than switching to Gnome's inferior system.
> > Many window managers and other menu-using tools don't have any
> > internal support for this. So, the approach that the Debian menu
> > system uses, while limited, may be the best possible compromise.
> This seems to be the behaviour of those commercial software companies. Not
> everything support this so let's get away with the greatest common divisor.
I disagree completely with this view. One of the reasons Linux is so
successful is that it is extremely compatible with 30 years of Unix
development. The "commercial" (I assume you actually mean proprietary
here) software companies generally want to lock you in, and will
introduce incompatibilities with other systems (and even their own
older systems) as often as they can get away with it.
Free software is about freedom. I'm trying to make sure that people
have the freedom NOT to use Gnome if they want.
> Following this path we will never improve as we don't use the
> features of our new software.
Ridiculous! Consider the case of Emacs, an editor that's as old or
older than Unix. Love it or hate it, you have to admit that it's kept
up with new features just fine without discarding the old. That's
because it's free software.
> I was asked if I could remove those "silly" menu entries from our
> systems. Nobody ever uses the Debian menus. Why? They are to deep
> nested.
That's why hints were added. And I'm fairly sure that Gnome has
NOTHING like hints! Why? Because Gnome has a more limited,
technically inferior menu system.
> Hmm. BTW - does WindowMaker support i18n?
No idea, since I don't use, or even particularly like, Windowmaker.
And I think you mean l10n -- Debian's menu system already supports
i18n.
Still, I think you're finally on the right track here. Do enough wm's
support l10n to justify adding it to Debian's menu system? I don't
know, but I suspect it's worth a shot. The wm's that don't support
l10n can just use the defaults, so no harm done.
But I still say we should add l10n to Debian's menu system, rather
than switching to Gnome's, because Debian's menu system *is* superior
in many, many ways. And switching to Gnome's menu system won't get
away from the need for update-menus, because fvwm, flwm, olvwm, mwm,
scwm, pdmenu, 9menu, emacs, etc. don't *and won't* use Gnome menu data
directly. Not to mention the fact that hints won't work without
something like update-menus to check out the hints and rearrange the
menus.
cheers
--
Chris Waters xtifr@dsp.net | I have a truly elegant proof of the
or xtifr@debian.org | above, but it is too long to fit into
http://www.dsp.net/xtifr | this .signature file.
Reply to: