Re: new menu spec in 2.6

[Damian Christey <damian ultrasoul com>]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 21:54, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> For 2.6 we really need to move to the new menu specification, or we will
> be lame and embarrassed and unable to fully enjoy the glorious new
> nautilus, file selector, volume handling, and other toys.

While we're talking about changes, I'd like to bring up an idea that was
mentioned a while back that caught my interest.

There seems to be several areas of overlap between menus (the current
.desktop file format) and bookmarks where it would be advantageous to
have a common file format and VFS backend.

* The way of the future for bookmarks seems to be category based, as in
Epiphany's implementation, .desktop files can contain categories and be
searched/sorted categorically.

* VFS can generate a hierarchical menu from .desktop files, Epiphany by
popular demand now also generates a hierarchical bookmark menu.

* Both bookmarks and .desktop files can have an associated icon.

* .desktop files can point to any URL and are already used as bookmarks
in Gnome, as in when you drag a link to the panel


>  2. Editing is horrible. Horrible. The mere thought of 
>     finishing the VFS-based editing implementation gives me 
>     nightmares.
>     I could do a lot more useful things with this time.

If bookmarks and menus could settle on a unified file format and VFS
backend, they could also share an editor.

>  3. Some people have mentioned re-adding Favorites to 2.6, 
>     don't know if it will happen.
> 

I don't see any reason to distinguish between Favorites and bookmarks. 
Being able to get to your bookmarks from Gnome's main menu would be
Really Cool(tm) in my opinion.
  Further more, I don't see why every application (looking at you,
Nautilus) should have to keep it's own set of bookmarks.

One bookmark/menu specification to rule them all!