Re: GNOME panel "menu" applet

[Derek Simkowiak <dereks kd-dev com>]

> My current criticisms of the existing menu applet are:
> * It's slow. It has a noticeable delay while popping up each submenu (as
> it re-reads the menu structure from disk). Caching would be good.

	As long as there is no more than a 2 or 3 second delay between the
change in the menu directory/config file and the menu getting updated,
caching would be good.  Having the user make a change, and then not see
those changes immediately in his menu, is unacceptable.

	If a cache is implemented, we may want to bind F5 (or similar) to
a "refresh" command, so the user can refresh his desktop manually.

> * It's ugly and inflexible.

	In your opinion... I think it looks quite nice.

> Why am I forced to have two "about" options? I don't CARE... I want
> NONE... but I can't REMOVE them... they're SET IN CODE...

	There should be some default entries, like the about entries, but
I agree they should be removable.  However, if the panel will be
completely customizable there should be, somewhere, a "return to system
default" button or command that people can use if the fsck up their menu
and just want to get back the system default.

	Or, perhaps it would be better if you could "export" the menu
direcotry/symlink hierarchy into a file of somekind, so you can set up the
menus the way you want them and then save that file and use it on other
Gnome desktops.

	Personally, I'd prefer to have a single text file over a directory
list/symlink setup.

> Why do I have to edit my menu with the menu-editor? Why can't I use the
> filemanager to do it? A bit like (god-forbid) windows...?

	menu != file.  What if I want a menu entry that runs a command
with a certain set of command-line options?  Then I need to create a shell
script for every such entry?  How do you integrate that with a
filemanager-based menu editor?  The symlinks idea has strengths, but I'm
not yet convinced it's the best approach...

> Why do we seperate things into "user" and "system" menus? As far as I,
> the user, am concerned, it's my panel, I want to be able to change stuff
> as I see fit. Being forced to split things into user and system sucks.

	Yes, I would like to see if we can get rid of that split.  We must
remember that Linux is not MS-Windows, it's actually a multi-user system,
so perhaps this split serves a purpose...?

> So, why don't we do it something like this:
[...]
	These are some good ideas.  Are you going to be the one to
implement these changes?  What's your take on this, Miguel?  

	I would like to know how MS-Windows NT handles the user/system
split (if it does at all), and how KDE stores menu information.

> Advantages:
> * Menu-editor can be scrapped.

	...there should still be a button or something that opens the
Filemanager up right to the menu directory.  People should not have to
"know" where the menu directory is, or that they must edit it to change
their menu.  It must be intuitive.

> Do people think this is a good idea?

	All in all, I like the idea.

--Derek