Re: Reducing the number of special uris in gnome

[Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandrakesoft com>]

Le ven 05/07/2002 à 10:11, James Henstridge a écrit :
> Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote:
> 
> >Sander Vesik <Sander Vesik Sun COM> writes:
> >  
> >
> >>Sorry - any particular reason you think that users would want to use the
> >>Debian menu as opposed to xxx menu? 
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Sure.
> >
> >(Note that I was talking about the debian menu *system*.)
> >
> >1) I think they'd rather use just one menu than a two or three
> >   different ones.
> >
> Both KDE and GNOME use .desktop files.  This is an agreed upon standard, 
> available from FreeDesktop.org:
>    http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-entry-spec.html
> 
> A distribution can provide .desktop files for packages quite easily, and 
> have them appear in both GNOME and KDE menus (Red Hat does this for 
> example).

When you uses Debian menu system, you don't need to, since .desktop are
generated by the menu system for both GNOME and KDE (using
menu-method)..
 
> >3) Standards are generally considered good, and even though the debian
> >   menu system is only standard on debian-based systems, I think it's
> >   good enough to be "promoted" to a desktop standard.
> >
> I took a quick look at the debian menus manual:
>     http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/
> 
> One big omission seems to be the lack of translated menu support.  Is 
> this due to the documentation not being up to date, or  a real 
> limitation of the system?
> 
> It looks like

I can only spec for Mandrake patched menu system : we extract string to
translate from all available menu entries in our distro, we generate a
.po and the menu system is patched to use gettext to generate translated
.desktop files

> >4) (On Debian) almost all desktops/wms except Gnome and Kde use the
> >   debian menu system as it's menu system.
> >
> Because they have been modified to use the system ...

Only partly : Debian menu system generates (using menu methods)
configuration files for all window managers (including GNOME/KDE)..
These files are then loaded as standard menu entries by window
managers/desktop environment..

> It doesn't look like the Debian system provides much benefit over the 
> desktop entries used in GNOME and KDE (especially when combined with the 
> vfolder system used in the 2.0 gnome panel menus).  By using desktop 
> entries you get the benefit of not having to modify the two major 
> desktop environments to use the menu system.

Well, for distributors like us, a lot of applications don't ship with
menu entry (either .desktop or Debian menu entry), so we have to create
them..
By only using .desktop, we limit people using other window managers than
GNOME/KDE (at least until all WM switched to .desktop). 

Moveover, there isn't a common menu layout between GNOME and KDE. As a
consequence, it can intimidating for new users..

As my final argument, GNOME menu layout (and KDE menu layout) has a
limited number of menu categories, which is good when you show only
GNOME (or KDE) applications but which become almost unusable if you show
all available graphical applications, if they aren't categorized
enough..

BTW, Debian menu system is already supported by GNOME 2.. It is only the
UI to configure default menu system which is not available yet..
-- 
Frédéric Crozat
MandrakeSoft