SOLVED: Editing the GNOME 2 Foot Menu, Main Menu

[Todd Pytel <tppytel sophrosune org>]

OK, finally figured it out.  Modified my subject line a bit in the hopes
that Google will grab it and maybe help others out in the future.

I figured the solution would be ugly, but didn't expect it to be quite
as ugly as it was.  The main menu definition is hard-coded in the
gnome-panel source - the relevant files being distribution.c, menu.c,
and menu-util.c.  The only way to change the menu is to patch those
files and recompile.  Since most people are not as obsessive as I am, I
won't bore you with the details.  The long and the short of it is that
the simplest way to customize the main menu is to use RedHat's patch to
menu-util.c - that's what makes their Application submenus "inline". 
Then you can edit the Applications vfolder according to the other info
online and get, in effect, a wholly different root menu since the
Application submenus show up directly in the root.  The other menu
entries (Screenshot, Lock Screen, etc.) are also defined in menu.c.

Simply adding a top-level menu to the existing structure (without
rewriting Applications) is not as easy as one might think.  Possibly you
could do it by coding in another "legacy" location - along the same
lines as the distribution and KDE menus, but it looks like the
main_menu_flags passed to create_root_menu() would be limiting there.

I could perhaps be missing some subtle gconf flag or something that
would make this whole process easier, so if some developer out there
knows this stuff, don't be afraid to speak up.  Personally, I'm just
trying to hack the menus so that only the personal Debian menus show up
in the foot menu, and none of the other stuff.  But perhaps some admins
looking to customize the menus for their site will find this info useful
as well.

Cheers,
Todd

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003 23:42:56 -0500
Todd Pytel <tppytel sophrosune org> wrote:

> I recognize that menu-editing in GNOME 2 is not exactly pretty, and I
> don't expect a user-friendly solution.  But I cannot for the life of
> me figure out where the MAIN menu (NOT Applications) is defined. 
> Somehow this is tweakable - RH's foot menu contains all the categories
> "inline", while Debian's has "Applications", "Debian Menu", and "KDE
> Menu" subfolders.  How is this accomplished?
> 
> Thanks,
> Todd