Re: determining which apps have entries in the applications menu in xfce
On Tue, 1 Aug 2017 22:12:55 -0700
Dan Hitt <dan.hitt@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm using a pretty vanilla debian 9 with xfce.
>
> There's an Applications menu in the upper left which has lots and lots
> of applications listed under multiple submenus.
>
> There's a program that i have on my system whose name i cannot find in
> the Applications menu.
>
> However, that might just be because i conducted a defective search.
>
> So i'm wondering if there's a systematic way to determine if the
> program is in the menu. (Presumably it is a matter of looking in
> /usr/bin or something like that, although that cannot be the complete
> solution as there are a few thousand programs in /usr/bin, and they
> cannot all fit in the menu. So i suspect there's a list somewhere . .
> . )
>
> TIA for any clues on this,
>
> dan
>
Before it gets too messy, and with menus it does... a maze of twisty
little XML files, none of which have any effect...
On the menu, go to Settings, then Main Menu. Explore the structure and
you might find your program, without a tick to enable it. I don't know
why this happens, but it does occasionally. You'll almost certainly
find other things you didn't know were there.
If not... click on the Xfce at the top left and look for 'Other' in the
right pane. If it is there, tick it, close out the menu then explore
the new Other (I'm assuming it is not there now or you would probably
have mentioned it). I won't guarantee that every binary on the system
is listed here, but it must be a large percentage, there will certainly
be things here which aren't anywhere else in the menu.
Whether your program is already in the menu or not, you can add it, but
first you need to know where it is. At a command prompt, type 'which
xxxx' with your program name, whereby you should see the full path to
the program binary.
Back in Settings->Main Menu, choose an appropriate location, then click
'New Item'. Give it a descriptive name and the start command i.e. the
path to the binary plus any parameters you want. You can run scripts
like this, or wrappers to the normal startup commands for programs, but
with extra parameters to control the startup.
--
Joe
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