Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: alacarte
As one works with revising the menus to taste, the "Other" category can
end up grotesquely swollen with duplications of entries created or moved
about. It appears (to this non-expert) that the problem arises from
alacarte somehow furbling up the "Categories" entry when it makes its
files.
Case in point: Create a new sub-menu of "System", named "Controls".
Copy a few entries from the existing "Preferences" and "Administration"
menus into "Controls". Now look into the "Other" Applications menu: all
the copied-over entries from "Controls" are duplicated in "Other";
moreover, these are not actually "duplicates" but effectively the same
entries: delete one in "Others" and it disappears from "Controls".
The issue seems to be shown in these two files:
Here is /usr/share/applications/Appearance
------------------------------------------
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Appearance
Comment=Customize the look of the desktop
Exec=gnome-appearance-properties %F
Icon=preferences-desktop-theme
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Settings;DesktopSettings;
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=gnome-control-center
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=Appearance
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=2.32.0
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-control-center-2.0
And here is ~/.local/share/applications/Appearance.desktop
----------------------------------------------------------
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Appearance
Comment=Customize the look of the desktop
Exec=gnome-appearance-properties %F
Icon=preferences-desktop-theme
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Categories=;
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=gnome-control-center
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=Appearance
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=2.32.0
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-control-center-2.0
Hidden=false
(The order of appearance of entries in the second has been changed by me to
make its correspondence with the original clearer.)
What leaps out is the "Categories=;" entry. An uncategorized entry is,
as I understand it, auto-grabbed into the "Others" sub-menu, which
apparently acts as a catchall "uncategorized" sort of trash can.
The same problem exists with many other files that end up made in the
~/.local/share/applications/ directory; I only presented this one
example for simplicity and clarity. Why this happens, I have no idea,
but it sure makes a nightmare out of trying to do any substantial menu
customization.
This is a fresh, clean install of Maverick. Per Synaptic, the alacarte
version is 0.13.2-ubuntu1 (but I have had this sort of problem since at
least Ubuntu 6 or 7).
It would seem to me that when alacarte creates these higher-level customized
.desktop files, it should be carrying across all the same data as are in the
original, and just adding in only what the user has added or changed (e.g.
"Hidden=false
"). I don't know what is supposed to happen to that datum if the user copies
or moves an entry into a sub-menu not contemplated in the original Category
string, but blanking it altogether does not seem a likely member of the list of
candidates.
** Affects: alacarte (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
** Tags: categories other
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/701330
Title:
"Other" category becomes choked
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