Re: PANEL OBJECTS

[robert havoc pennington <rhpennin midway uchicago edu>]

On Mon, 11 May 1998, George wrote:
> 
> well one would have to add .desktop files ... It hink this should be
> addressed by the filemanager... and maybe the menu code in the panel
> needs a little bit of inspection and revision
> 

If anyone wants to do this, I was playing with it and here's what's
needed, in my view.

- the panel has to scan some directory in the user's home directory, in
  addition to share/apps. While you're changing this, the function which 
  scans share/apps is a giant beast that could be cleaned up. 

- the user-specific stuff has to be merged with the share/apps stuff.
  There are several approaches:
   - just ignore share/apps if the user has anything
   - the icewm way, a "Programs" menu for share/apps and user items
     go where the current stuff is. (I like this way)
   - try to merge share/apps and the user stuff in some way - this is a
     mess IMO.

- the above does not allow customizing the Panel menu, "Lock screen" and
  "Log out." Perhaps customizing this can go in the Panel's properties
  dialog if anyone cares enough.
 
- A .desktop files editor is needed; I think there's one in gmc already,
  but it might be worth breaking out into a separate app. This is like the
  Info dialog on MacOS, only more stuff in it.

The above will let you use gmc to create the home directory, and edit
.desktop files in it. Good enough for the hackerish among us.  For real
usability, though, people should be able to drag-and-drop shortcuts from
share/apps onto their own menu, without knowing in advance about
share/apps. Also, they should be able to add shortcuts without knowing to
call them foo.desktop, and they should be able to easily browse the icons
available on the system.  They also shouldn't have to know what to call
the directory containing the menu items. Most of this is addressed by that
old "Simplified Virtual File System" idea.

If there is no simplified virtual filesystem, the directory full of
.desktop files should maybe be replaced by a gnome-config file and an
application like edit-menus in gnome-utils (currently abandoned), because
the raw tree of .desktop files is too confusing IMO.

One unpleasantry the Interface Hall of Shame mentions (or used to) is that
neither Windows nor Mac lets you choose the order of the items on the
menu; this is a consequence of storing the menu items in the filesystem. 
Optional ordering information could conceivably be added to .desktop
files, or .directory files, to deal with this.

Unfortunately much of the usability stuff hinges on how gmc ultimately
implements file metainformation, etc., so for now only the first few
things I mentioned can really be done. I'd say su and edit share/apps for
now, and implement the real fix later. Or maybe quickly hack the panel so
the directory scanned is configurable.

Havoc