Can't add gnome2.6 menus and items

[Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@shaw.ca>]

All my searching turns up the same instructions but it doesn't quite 
work. I've created a menu under Applications, but the only items that I 
can add to this menu are ones that I copy/paste from elsewhere, such as 
gnome-terminal and other apps. If I create my own launcher either from 
the menu pop-up or from nautilus, I get corresponding files created in 
~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications, but nothing I've tried will  make them 
appear in the menu. The menu itself appears on the main menu and I can 
get a copy of it onto the panel.

Actually, on another similar (sid) machine I _did_ have a similar menu 
populated. A couple of weeks ago it suddenly got emptied, I believe 
during some package updates when I was getting udev and hotplug to work. 
I did the same updates (I don't have a list of the packages) on this 
current machine that never had the menu in the first place. The menu is 
still on the panel, and the menu items on that machine are still in its 
~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications directory, but the items no longer 
appear in the menu. It seems the two are related.

Any ideas?

...RickM...