Re: GNOME 2.0 Defaults

[Michael Rogers <banthafodder connectfree co uk>]

> http://www242.pair.com/nilsp/nils/panel/menus.html

I like the idea of the Actions menu, and it's definitely a good idea to
merge Programs with Favourites.

Maybe there should be two system-wide menu trees, one of which is for
'defaults' and the other for 'standards'? If a user creates a menu entry
with the same name as an entry in the 'defaults' menu, the default entry
is hidden. (So for example you could change the Mozilla entry to point
to an unsupported version in /opt.) If there is an entry in the
'standards' menu with the same name, it hides the user's entry. (Or the
user's entry could be automatically renamed with the suffix "(username)"
to avoid confusion.) The idea is to make tech support easier, because if
Foot->Internet->Netscape exists in the 'standards' menu, the
administrator knows it will point to the same place for every user. The
user can still create Foot->Internet->Netscape 3, or
Foot->Internet->Netscape (username) alongside the standard entry.

It would also be nice to be able to delete default entries. This could
be accomplished using the merging mechanism I just described, plus a
'hidden' flag for each entry. When the user "deletes" a default menu
entry, the menu editor creates a user-specific menu entry with the same
name and the 'hidden' flag set. When the menu is displayed, the
user-specific entry hides the system-wide entry, and is itself hidden
because of the flag. Items cannot be deleted from the 'standards' menu.


Michael