Re: GNOME panel "menu" applet

[Michael Rogers <m rogers cs ucl ac uk>]

> 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...?

You can - go to ~/.gnome/apps and drag some icons around, delete them,
examine their properties, etc. To replace the menu editor, all you need to
do is add a "New launcher" item to the right-click menu in gmc windows. It
would also be nice if .desktop files displayed the same icon in the file
manager as on the desktop/menu. I'm sure you could borrow the necessary
code from the desktop part of gmc to make both these modifications.

> 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.

I agree. The system menu should be invisible to normal users - they should
start with a copy of it instead. (Not that it's hard to make a copy and
then hide the original, but it would be nicer to have this done
automatically).
 
> Completely scrap any support for things like "Debian menus" and "DE
> menus" and so forth, rather implement them the same as any other type of
> menu (directory of symlinks), possibly with some form of auto-convertor.

People who run Gnome and KDE (or Gnome and Another Level) probably
appreciate these. You can switch them off in the menu launcher properties
dialog if they annoy you.
 
> The "panel" menu could be implemented in two ways. The starting of
> applets could be implemented using symlinks, the same as any other type
> of program.

I agree. I expect this will change with the separation of gnome-core from
gnome-applets.

> All the other "add" options could delegated to a small
> helper executable which activates the required function somehow (CORBA?)

There's not much point moving the functions outside the panel executable
and then connecting them back via CORBA, because they will only be talking
to the panel.

> The properties functions really belong in the control center anyway.

The panel submenu could be moved to the right-click menu - this is where I
keep looking for it.  :)  The about dialogs could live there too - most
panel applets have their properties and about dialogs on the right-click
menu.


Michael Rogers