Waldo Bastian wrote:
On Tuesday 12 September 2006 23:19, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
Bastian, Waldo wrote:
This change codifies how to use different .menu files for
different desktop environments. Some distributions currently
already do this. This change will require them to set
$XDG_MENU_PREFIX accordingly. They should also check that their
distribution picks up the applications-merged directory
correctly.
Current:
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/menus/applications.menu This file contains the
XML definition of the main application menu layout. The first
file found in the search path should be used; other files are
ignored. This implies that if the user has their own
applications.menu, it replaces the system wide one. (Though the
user's menu may explicitly merge the system wide one.) Other menu
files may exist, but are not specified in this document.
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/menus/menu-file-basename-merged/ The default
merge directories included in the <DefaultMergeDirs> element. By
convention, third parties may add new <Menu> files in this
location. menu-file-basename means the "applications" from
"applications.menu" for example. So the merge directory would be
"applications-merged".
Proposed:
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/menus/${XDG_MENU_PREFIX}applications.menu This
file contains the XML definition of the main application menu
layout. The first file found in the search path should be used;
other files are ignored. This implies that if the user has their
own ${XDG_MENU_PREFIX}applications.menu, it replaces the system
wide one. (Though the user's menu may explicitly merge the system
wide one.)
Systems that offer multiple desktop environments and that want to
use distinct menu layouts in the different environments can use
differently prefixed .menu files. In this case the
$XDG_MENU_PREFIX environment variable must be set by the system
to reflect the .menu file that is being used.
For example if a system contains both the GNOME and the KDE
desktop environments it can decide to use gnome-applications.menu
as the menu layout in GNOME sessions and kde-applications.menu as
the menu layout in KDE sessions. To correctly reflect this, it
should set the $XDG_MENU_PREFIX environment variable to "gnome-"
respectively "kde-".
Implementations may chose to use .menu files with other names for
tasks or menus other than the main application menu. Such usage
is not covered by this specification.
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/menus/applications-merged/ The default merge
directories included in the <DefaultMergeDirs> element of
application.menu files. By convention, third parties may add new
<Menu> files in this location to create their own sub-menus.
Note that a system that uses either gnome-applications.menu or
kde-applications.menu depending on the desktop environment in use
must still use applications-merged as the default merge directory
in both cases.
Implementations may chose to use .menu files with names other
than application.menu for tasks or menus other than the main
application menu. In that case the first part of the name of the
default merge directory is derived from the name of the .menu
file.
For example in a system that uses a preferences.menu file to
describe an additional menu, the default merge directories
included in the <DefaultMergeDirs> element in the
preferences.menu file would become
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/menus/preferences-merged/
I don't see the need for the environment variable since KDE knows
that it is KDE and GNOME knows it is GNOME.
The need is there when a third party application wants to understand
which file to look at for a description of the menu.
Then perhaps XDG needs to provide a simple way to determine which
DeskTop is running.
Or even when a GNOME application wants to do something with the menu
while running under KDE, or vice versa.
Not sure about this. Editing of the ".../xdg/menus/applications.menu"
file should be limited to an administrative application run by root.
Any other changes to the menu (additions) should be made by adding a
file to the: "xdg/menus/applications-merged/" directory.
I still prefer my proposed solution which is to have multiple
".../xdg/menus/" directories with a suffix:
.../xdg/menus.kde/
.../xdg/menus.gnome/
and a global:
.../xdg/menus/
directory which would be used as a backup and/or for all desktops.
That is:
.../xdg/menus/applications.menu
would be used if there wasn't one:
.../xdg/menus.<desktop>/applications.menu
and the contents of the directory:
../xdg/menus/applications-merged/
would be used for all desktops.
Yes, that's of course a valid alternative solution but so far
distributions have chosen to use a scheme that only changes the name
of the applications.menu file.
I suggest this since it is possible that there would still be
conflicts in the files in:
.../xdg/menus/
Currently, GNOME has:
.../xdg/menus/applications.menu .../xdg/menus/preferences.menu
.../xdg/menus/settings.menu
and the second and third are not GNOME specific names.
However, KDE does have KDE specific names:
.../xdg/menus/applications.menu .../xdg/menus/kde-information.menu
.../xdg/menus/kde-screensavers.menu .../xdg/menus/kde-settings.menu
If we aren't going to have separate directories, perhaps the prefix
requirement should apply to all files in the directory.
All other files in this directory are desktop specific so far I don't
think there is a strict need for such requirement but it would be
good practice to prefix any desktop specific .menu files, yes.
It is also possible that it might be necessary to merge different
sets of applications-merged files for different desktops. How do
you propose to address that?
If you have a desktop specific applications.menu file you can specify
addtional merge dirs in the .menu file for that specific desktop.
Yes, that would also work to create a private directory for the DeskTop.
I note that my suggestion is for a general solution which is not limited
to this issue. Whenever, different DeskTops would install different
versions of the same file in the same directory that multiple instances
of that directory can be created: "<directory>.<desktop>".
--
JRT
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