> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2018 18:22:06 -0500 > From: "Roger W. Broseus" <rog...@bronord.com> > Subject: Re: [xubuntu-users] XFCE4 desktop menus > > Chris and Ulli, > > Excuse the top post but this is the way *I* think. > > For some time I, too, was puzzled by menu editing. Now I don't find > it particularly hard to edit drop items on the whisker menu, using > Settings > Menu Editor. > > But, getting a click-able item on the desktop was a challenge. Once I > found the method, it's just a bit tedious. I've had to do so with my > preferred file manager, Nemo. After installing it, I found that I can > launch it from the CLI merely by giving the command nemo. So, to > create an icon to execute an app from the desktop, > > Right-click on a blank area on the desktop > Select Create Launcher > Give it a name, e.g., Nemo > Type nemo in the "Command:" box > click on the Icon dialog button > Up comes a large number of candidate icons, one of which was for Nemo! > Click on Create > > And the icon appears on the desktop. On first use, click on the Mark > Executable button. > > That's it. > > One can also drag this new icon to one a panel to make it more > accessible. (Panel e.g., a "strip" along the top edge of the desktop > where there are icons to initiate execution of apps.) > > More complicated is creating a launcher for an application which does > not appear in Ubuntu software installer pool. For example, I installed > gRi, an app to rip and create MP3 files, obtained from another > source. grip was installed from in /opt so I had to enter > /opt/grip/bin/grip > in the command box. Getting an icon was more of a challenge. I created > a small image using The GIMP to do a selection from an on-line image > and saving it as a .ico file. > > Hope this helps. > > -- > Roger > linux....@gmail.com
Roger, Thanks for taking time to write this lengthy response. Regrettably my problems lie in a different direction. Perhaps I should have been more specific. I'm solely interested in getting my own formatted menu on a right click on the desktop (although I think the menu available in whisker menu has the same content}. Let me quote the first example of a problem with what I'm trying to achieve. I've come to understand that the default desktop menu (and whisker?) is created by the script at /etc/xdg/menus/xfce/xfce-applications.menu being run and populated by the *.directory and *.desktop files that it finds, mainly under /usr/share/desktop-directories and /usr/share/applications, but maybe from other locations as well. This is the default before I attempt to make any changes to the menu. I want to add two sub-directories to the others (Settings, Accessories, etc) in the main menu named "Terminals" and "Text Editors". Since these sub-directories are not listed in /etc/xdg/menus/xfce/xfce-applications.menu nor are there *.directory files for them under /usr/share/desktop-directories, I need to create them. So as explained at https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu I firstly copy /etc/xdg/menus/xfce/xfce-applications.menu to my ~/.config/menus/, then I edit the copied file to include two extra sub-directory sections for "Terminals" and "Text Editors". Then I add new Terminals.directory and Text Editors.directory files to ~/.local/share/desktop-directories/. According to my understanding, the new xfce-applications.menu will take precedence over the same file in /etc/xdg/menus/ and it will add my two new *.directory files to the menu as sub-directory items. This is where things start to go astray. A first running of the desktop right-click menu (maybe whisker too) has the sub-directories properly listed. Subsequent selections of the menu "lose" my two new sub-menus, so that I'm back to the default menu. What is even more confusing is that at some point my new ~/.config/menus/xfce-applications.menu file has been converted from a script to a fully populated menu file. That file includes my new sub-directories and the applications that I would expect to see in these sub-directories, and yet they do not show up when the menu is activated. All very confusing and I'm glad I've got it on paper and off my chest. All of this before I get to editing individual menu entries (which has it's own problems}. -- Chris Dunn -- xubuntu-users mailing list xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-users
