Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

[Matt Herbert <mherbert cabletron com>]

Matthias Warkus wrote:
> 
> +++ Mon, Aug 02, 1999 at 02:54:53PM -0400 +++
> jack wallen, jr e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> 
> > UI:
> >
> >       Ability for normal user to edit menu entries
> 
> Impossible. The best thing we could do were to copy the entire
> system menu over to the home directory and have it edited there. But
> then upgrades to the system menu's wouldn't reach you any more.
> 

Why is this impossible? This doesn't seem like it should be that difficult.
First the code would read in the menu's from the system area.  Then it
would check the user's home directory, and add any new entries into the
menu tree that were found.  Then display the menu.  Obviously the user's
settings would have precedence over the system menu's.

This would allow Joe Average User to open up the menu editor, and change
something about the gnorpm entry. The menu editor would then save a whole
new gnorpm entry in the users home directory (say .gnome/apps/System/gnorpm.desktop),
which would override the settings of the system entry.

It may also make sense to add a new "Special=delete" entry to the menu
item, so If a user wanted to completely remove gnorpm from their menu,
they would be able to delete it via the menu editor, which would create
a gnorpm.desktop file in the user's home directory, with the special setting,
and thus not show the gnorpm menu entry at all.

Granted, I don't know C, but I do know perl, and I can picture exactly how
the code would work.  Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like
it would be a relatively easy change.

This addition would be very nice.  It would allow a user to change their
menu entries to suit their own personal needs, -and- still allow them
to see changes to the system menus.  All without having to su to root.

-Matt

PS, I'm not picking on gnorpm, I was just using it as an example :)