Re: [proaudio] Thoughts about menu entries and usability

[Dominique Michel <dominique.michel@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Le Tue, 6 Feb 2007 15:14:55 +0100,
Thomas Kuther <gimpel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> a écrit :

> On Di, 06.02.07 14:57 Yves Cochard <yves.cochard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Hi
> > 
> > Yeah that's a good idea!
> > 
> > Acutally, I use only separator to separate the seq/synth/other sound 
> > stuff...
> > 
> > But I don't know how it's possible to manage the entry for the apps? 
> > Will they all be here by default, wheter the apps are install or not? 
> > (and then just remove the apps which aren't installed manually by 
> > ticking in the menu editor of xfce4?)
> 
> No, that would be only for apps that are actually installed. Means, only
> for apps that have a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications
> 
> I'm just reading about default toplevel categories:
> http://portland.freedesktop.org/xdg-utils-1.0/xdg-desktop-menu.html
> 
> And about known additional categories:
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/menu-spec-1.0.html#category-registry
> 
> So by FDO standards a menu would look like this:
> 	Sound & Video
> 	--> Audio
> 		--> Sequencer
> 		--> Mixer
> 		--> Midi
> 		--> Recorder
> 		--> AudioVideoEditing
> 
> Those are available standard categories, I would say this is
> even specific enough. No need for extra ebuild magic \o/
> 
> The ebuild writers/maintainers just have to take care that for example
> LMMS installs the .desktop file with category
> 	"AudioVideo;Audio;Sequencer"
> and it should appear in the right place.

It is no Sound and Video
The main categories for multimedia are (but the wm are free to show other
names):
	Audio
	AudioVideo
	Video

In Audio, we have:
	Audio
	--> AudioVideoEditing
	--> HamRadio
	--> Midi
	--> Mixer
	--> Player
	--> Recorder
	--> Sequencer
	--> Tuner

It is some "any" categories that can be everywhere:
	Amusement
	ConsoleOnly
	Core
	Documentatation
	Electronics
	Engineering
	Gtk
	--> Gnome
	Java
	Motif
	Qt
	--> KDE

It is also not listed categories prefixed by "X-"

It is also a category:
AudioVideo
	--> Music

DiscBurning is also in AudioVideo.
And so on...

In consequence, a program that will generate a menu for a non conforming wm must
deal with the categories in a general way and don't care if the result is true
or false. It must use what is in the .desktop file. If the desktop file is
wrong, the result will be wrong and someone has to fill a bug report upstream,
because the problem is coming from the .desktop file and nowhere else. (and
maybe fix it in the ebuild in the meantime)

I begin to write a script for fvwm-crystal. All it is doing now is to search
for .desktop files and write a list in a file, read this file and, for each
file, output the file path and name as well as some of the keys in the file.

It is at least 2 new problems:
Many program still have old fashion .desktop file without category in the
file, and some .desktop files are wrong, as example a Kpart program that doesn't
have the NoDisplay key but is unusable from outside a kde program.
Some, especially kde programs, have command lines that will work only in kde
context and have to be seriously filtred.

So, to do this script will take as much time like it take to a gun to become
cool after at it have been used: a certain time.

Ciao,
Dominique

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