Bug#707851: debian-policy: soften the wording recommending menu files
Sune Vuorela <sune@debian.org> writes:
> On Sunday 12 May 2013 10:08:52 Charles Plessy wrote:
>> If we were to recommend FreeDesktop menu entries instead of Debian menu
>> entires, and if this recommendation were followed carefully, this would
>> increase the number of entries in the Gnome and KDE menus on some
>> sytems where the user has installed extra packages. In particular,
>> some entries will be redundant with the default applications, and
>> provide only an XPM icon or no icon at all.
> Currently Plasma Desktop shows both the Debian menu and the 'real' menu
> - with loads of overlaps between them. All these overlaps comes with one
> with a 'good icon' and nice descriptions and everything. The other comes
> with a poor xpm icon or no icon at all, and not always good descriptions
> of the program. I think that if we stopped using the Debian menu and
> just used the Desktop Menu Spec, it would result in *fewer* items in the
> menu, and best of all no duplicates.
Charles's point, which has come up in a few other discussions, is that
quite a few packages ship with Debian menu files but do not include
desktop files. One of the open questions (which I think Charles has tried
to pursue in the past) is whether every program with a Debian menu file
should have a desktop file. The answer to that question has obvious
implications for any migration strategy. I think that's what he's trying
to get at here, not the question of whether the Debian menu should be
enabled in a desktop environment.
I'd be very curious as to your opinion on that.
For example, on my system, there are Debian menu entries for bash, bc,
bsh, dash, dc, info, irssi, lynx-cur, ncftp, procps (top), psmisc
(pstree), tcsh, telnet, texlive-base (TeXconfig), units, w3m, and zsh. I
suspect that most, if not all, of those programs do not have desktop
files currently.
Do you want them to? A straightforward reading of this modification to
Policy, were I the bc and dc maintainer, would indicate that I should add
a desktop file to the package.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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