Re: vfolder .desktop and Window Maker
On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 02:48:11PM +0100, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
> Hi Havoc,
>
> do you read debian-gtk-gnome? Should I keep you in the Cc:?
>
I don't mind either way. Both the cc and the list version go into my
debian-misc folder, so the cc doesn't help, but it doesn't bother me
either.
> > What do you mean by "centralized filters" - just disabling/enabling
> > certain menu items? The .menu files in the new spec should allow
> > people to rearrange the menus however they want.
>
> He means being able to apply global transformations to the menu
> entries. With Debian's menu, it's possible to replace
> Apps/Tools/Clocks/ by Dabidu/ by modifying a configuration file. Other
> kinds of transformations are possible. I have used the feature only a
> couple of times in several years.
>
> AFAICS, this is covered by the merge stuff and the funky commands
> (<Move>, <Delete>, ...)
Yes I would think this is possible with the current spec.
> In other words, it's possible for filter out, say, Qt applications
> provided that they are correctly categorized.
>
> What's not clear to me is how you picture this whole thing working.
> Should applications (e.g. Window Maker) read and parse the .desktop and
> .menu files. I see that you *could* apply transformations to generate
> menus in other formats, but I get the feeling you do intend
> applications for the data directly.
It can work either way. In Red Hat Linux 8 there's desktop-menu-tool,
and I just got a patch to add WindowMaker support to it, that
loads menus from the older version of the vfolder spec and outputs
in other formats. You can do it that way if you want, though gnome and
kde will probably read the .menu files directly.
It's really up to the application and whatever's easiest to implement.
> <-- An Office submenu, specified inline -->
> <Menu>
> <Name>Office</Name>
> <Directory>Office.directory</Directory>
> <Include>
> <Category>Office</Category>
> </Include>
> <Exclude>
> <Filename>foo.desktop</Filename>
> </Exclude>
> </Menu>
>
> what's category doing there? I guess my question is rather, what are
> all those selectors doing there? It looks as if the .menu files where
> the input for some sort of XSLT thing, but without actually being XSL
> transformations.
>
> It certainly looks complicated. Why am I including a directory callted
> "Office" and then explicitely saying that I only want the "Office"
> entries? Is this just a bad example?
>
The <Name> is used in a URI-type thing such as
applications:///Office/foo.desktop in nautilus. It would also be used
for menu merging purposes. Think of it as a directory name.
The include/exclude statements define what's in the menu named
Office. So for example it includes everything in the category Office,
but then as a special case excludes the "foo.desktop" entry.
Most menus will be based on a single category as shipped by an
operating system, probably, but local customizations are likely to add
specific entries to include/exclude.
Havoc
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