On Tue 09 Sep 2003 15:09, Buchan Milne posted as excerpted below:
> This will not work until all desktops use one menu/mime-type system (who
> the idiots were who decided to implement one per desktop is something I
> would like to find out ...). Your associations will be reset every time
> you run update-menus (which happens when you log in, and should happen
> after you install a new package). You may be able to put entries in with
> the menudrake, I haven't tried.

<rant>

I finally took to creating my own alternative menu file override entries in 
/etc/menu, copying entries from the mandrake-defaults in /usr/lib/menu to 
/etc/menu then changing them as necessary.

I got tired of the limitations of menudrake such as tiny attrib edit dialogs 
that show perhaps 15 chars (non-resizable windows) when attribs like kde_opt 
are commonly hundreds of characters long.  I have three monitors @ 1280x1024 
each precisely to avoid the "keyhole effect" of small viewports, and that's 
precisely what the menudrake attrib edit dialog gives me.  As well, there's 
no way in menudrake to duplicate entries, except for creating a new one and 
painstakingly copying the attribs one by one.  On the icons, since it doesn't 
list the path to the icon, just shows it, it's difficult and sometimes 
impossible to create a new entry accurately anyway, because you can't find 
the proper icons!  Finally, it's entirely to easy to wipe out a whole slew of 
changes by saving the wrong config when switching between the user settings 
and the default settings, in part because menudrake stores all changes in a 
single file instead of one file for each menu entry, as are the original 
files.  (Yes, I should really file bug reports on all this, but I'm going to 
wait until post 9.2 since it's in freeze.)

All these problems are resolved by doing it the old fashioned way -- copying 
the config files as necessary and editing them in your favorite text editor, 
then running update-menus manually.  The documentation is where one would 
expect under /usr/share/doc/menu-<version>, or one can just look at existing 
entries and figure out what is going on.

This sort of customization allows for several improvements.  One, I can 
actually get file associations to STICK, system-wide, and not get 
over-written each time!  Two, I can put my own command line options and other 
customized attributes in, and have them STICK!  Three, the menu items stick 
around better, causing less problems with khotkeys losing its settings 
because the menu item disappeared at the last update due to some package 
change, as invoking a hotkey on a non-existent menuitem causes khotkeys to 
erase that entry from the hotkey config, so even when I got the entry back, I 
was having to manually configure the hotkey for it again.  With properly 
modified /etc/menu/ menu file entries, the menu entry remains even if the 
default package it formerly depended on split out from under it or some such, 
and the default entry is no longer there.

</rant>

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin


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