How to a user can add menu entry for GNOME ?

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

Hello GNOME Debian maintainer,

Andreas Tille and the Custom Debian Distribution project needs
a way to add user specific menu-entry to the GNOME panel. This
is also the stumbling block of bug #259400.

Is there a location in the user HOME directory where custom .desktop
files can be added that will be processed by gnome-panel ?

XDG menu use .local/share/applications but somehow this is not
supported by gnome-panel.

Thanks in advance, [Please CC me and Andreas, thanks]
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.