gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Daniel Dickinson]

For discussion:

Gnome, KDE, and XFCE are the the top three desktops used in debian and
cover most users of desktops in debian.

They all use xdg .desktop-based menus as their main menu.

xdg .desktop-based menus are not covered by policy.

This means some maintainers refuse to use them (see bug #478954 and
#478916).

The main menu (meaning the primary menu used for program selection; I
don't include quick access menus which have a small selection of often
used programs) should either be the debian-menu or all packages which
are supposed to have menu entires should also be required to
supply .desktop files.

Having a dual-menu scheme in policy is ugly.

Currently the debian-menu is a submenu of the main menu, called
'Debian'.  

Having the main menu, where users, especially new users, expect
to find all their programs not be canonical is also ugly.  Having
the canonical menu as a submenu (currently the case) means the programs
are at least available but you have to know to look there when you can't
find it in the main menu, and looking in two places to find a program
is a pain. You could always look in the debian menu always, but then why
have the main menu?

menu-xdg provides the 'Debian' menu (or main menu if that is the choice
debian makes) from debian-menu entries as an xdg-compliant menu and
entries.

desktops that want to have .desktop entries for specific programs ought
to be responsible for creating the code that merges the debian main
menu with their main menu (e.g. in menu-xdg), rather than forcing every
other application in debian to do their work for them.

Regards,

Daniel
-- 
And that's my crabbing done for the day.  Got it out of the way early, 
now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or 
strangle cute bunnies or something.   -- Michael Devore
GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C  http://gnupg.org
No more sea shells:  Daniel's Webloghttp://cshore.wordpress.com


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[William Pitcock]

Hi,

On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 02:42 -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> For discussion:
> 
> Gnome, KDE, and XFCE are the the top three desktops used in debian and
> cover most users of desktops in debian.
> 
> They all use xdg .desktop-based menus as their main menu.
> 
> xdg .desktop-based menus are not covered by policy.

Honestly, policy really needs to be updated to use the XDG standards
menu spec, and every WM at this point really should be using them for
their menus.

I think the debian-menu system should be seen as legacy, since it has
been replaced with a standard used and supported by many upstreams and
many other distros.

However, there's a few places where debian-menu is a better solution
though. (It can be used to build menus for many WMs which do not support
XDG, but honestly, do we need all these WMs?)

Another solution would be to make debian-menu build .desktop entries for
the menu in the main menu namespace and not the 'Debian' namespace; this
seems like the easiest solution.

William



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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Paul Wise]

On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 4:15 PM, William Pitcock
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Honestly, policy really needs to be updated to use the XDG standards
> menu spec, and every WM at this point really should be using them for
> their menus.
>
> I think the debian-menu system should be seen as legacy, since it has
> been replaced with a standard used and supported by many upstreams and
> many other distros.
>
> However, there's a few places where debian-menu is a better solution
> though. (It can be used to build menus for many WMs which do not support
> XDG, but honestly, do we need all these WMs?)
>
> Another solution would be to make debian-menu build .desktop entries for
> the menu in the main menu namespace and not the 'Debian' namespace; this
> seems like the easiest solution.

+1

Same for defoma/fontconfig.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 02:42:27AM -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> For discussion:
> 
> Gnome, KDE, and XFCE are the the top three desktops used in debian and
> cover most users of desktops in debian.
> 
> They all use xdg .desktop-based menus as their main menu.

You already opened a bug against policy for this: #484656, add it to the
CC.


Kurt


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Russ Allbery]

William Pitcock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Honestly, policy really needs to be updated to use the XDG standards
> menu spec, and every WM at this point really should be using them for
> their menus.

You mean the specification that is followed mostly in the breech by actual
implementations and to which KDE at least has a whole ton of extensions?

The XDG menu specification isn't anywhere near formalized enough or
sufficiently well-followed in Debian to be meaningfully standardized in
Debian Policy.  If people want to see it become Policy, they need to fix
how it's implemented in the archive first, which is probably going to
require significant work with Gnome, KDE, and the XDG standardization
process upstream.  Right now, different implementations can't even agree
on the permitted keys, let alone on the menu categories.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED])   


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Thomas Viehmann]

Paul Wise wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 4:15 PM, William Pitcock
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>> Honestly, policy really needs to be updated to use the XDG standards
>> menu spec, and every WM at this point really should be using them for
>> their menus.
>>
>> I think the debian-menu system should be seen as legacy, since it has
>> been replaced with a standard used and supported by many upstreams and
>> many other distros.
>>
>> However, there's a few places where debian-menu is a better solution
>> though. (It can be used to build menus for many WMs which do not support
>> XDG, but honestly, do we need all these WMs?)
>>
>> Another solution would be to make debian-menu build .desktop entries for
>> the menu in the main menu namespace and not the 'Debian' namespace; this
>> seems like the easiest solution.

> +1

I don't think that the idea of superseding menu lacks support, it lacks
people doing the work (and the coding part seems small compared to
creating a mapping the categories, preferably in both directions, and
come up with a sane policy). Also, this seems to be something to do
shortly after a release...

Another issue besides categories preventing the "easiest solution" to be
a feasible one is what to do with generic names: You would not want to
have half a dozen "Text editor" entries in a menu but you would not want
Debian to unnecessarily diverge from generic naming schemes or drop
generic names that upstreams use, either.

Suggestions of the "do we need all the WMs" variety may appear to point
out less work-intensive ways but really just cover up that developing a
good policy and conversion is the much larger issue than where to put
files of which format and start a useless side discussion.

Kind regards

T.
-- 
Thomas Viehmann, http://thomas.viehmann.net/


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Russ Allbery]

Russ Allbery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> You mean the specification that is followed mostly in the breech by
> actual implementations and to which KDE at least has a whole ton of
> extensions?

Or in the breach, even.  Although in the breech does sum up my opinion on
parts of it.  :)

Some examples:

http://lintian.debian.org/tags/desktop-entry-contains-unknown-key.html

(and that doesn't include the ones that aren't listed in the standard but
that Lintian has just given up on because they're so widespread, like
Actions)

http://lintian.debian.org/tags/desktop-entry-invalid-category.html

(and that doesn't count Application and GNUstep, which are also invalid
but which I just gave up on since they're used all over the place)

http://lintian.debian.org/tags/desktop-entry-lacks-main-category.html
http://lintian.debian.org/tags/desktop-entry-uses-reserved-category.html

And that's just the stuff that Lintian happens to check for.  I shudder to
think what the results would be if Lintian started doing a complete syntax
check against the standard, looking for things like ending list
attributes with a semicolon the way they're required to be.

Not to mention that, as standards go, the XDG menu and desktop standard is
a rather poor one.  It's not very well-written, it's not very clear, it's
huge (tons of different keys with different meanings, sometimes
cryptically explained), and the menu category list in particular is
horribly scattershot and confusing.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED])   


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[William Pitcock]

Hi,

On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 01:46 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> You mean the specification that is followed mostly in the breech by actual
> implementations and to which KDE at least has a whole ton of extensions?
> 

I think the XDG standard is actually *based* on the Desktop Entry spec
from KDE1/KDE2, but this is only based on vague memories of
writing .desktop/.icon files back in 1999-2003.

So, it doesn't surprise me that KDE implements more than the spec. But I
haven't used KDE3 much, so I don't know if it's still the way it was
last time I touched KDE, which was in the Debian 2.2/3.0 days...

Or maybe the Desktop Entry spec is based on the minimal ground seen
between both KDE and GNOME, in which case, it's sad that it hasn't
improved since that point...

William


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Daniel Dickinson]

On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:54:30 +0200
Thomas Viehmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> >>
> >> Another solution would be to make debian-menu build .desktop
> >> entries for the menu in the main menu namespace and not the
> >> 'Debian' namespace; this seems like the easiest solution.
> 
> > +1
> 
> I don't think that the idea of superseding menu lacks support, it
> lacks people doing the work (and the coding part seems small compared
> to creating a mapping the categories, preferably in both directions,
> and come up with a sane policy). Also, this seems to be something to
> do shortly after a release...

I've been approaching this as a sort-of-integrator point of view (I've
been working on systems I've been giving away, and have been developing
automation for the installation process that happens after
debian-installer, and will be moving that to using debian-installer
once I have figured out what I need.  The results of this will probably
be in lenny+1, but in the meantime I've got a post-install setup that
lets me install a 'standard' system, and then run the post-install and
end up with what I want) rather than dd point-of-view (because I'm not,
et).  In any event if there is already a nice summary of what needs
doing, and any tips on how to do it, I'm game to work on it for lenny+1.

I'd still like to see the debian menu as the main menu for lenny
though ... though I may be the only one.

-- 
And that's my crabbing done for the day.  Got it out of the way early, 
now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or 
strangle cute bunnies or something.   -- Michael Devore
GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C  http://gnupg.org
No more sea shells:  Daniel's Webloghttp://cshore.wordpress.com


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Daniel Dickinson]

On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:54:30 +0200
Thomas Viehmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Paul Wise wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 4:15 PM, William Pitcock
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 
> >> Honestly, policy really needs to be updated to use the XDG
> >> standards menu spec, and every WM at this point really should be
> >> using them for their menus.
> >>
> >> I think the debian-menu system should be seen as legacy, since it
> >> has been replaced with a standard used and supported by many
> >> upstreams and many other distros.
> >>
> >> However, there's a few places where debian-menu is a better
> >> solution though. (It can be used to build menus for many WMs which
> >> do not support XDG, but honestly, do we need all these WMs?)
> >>
> >> Another solution would be to make debian-menu build .desktop
> >> entries for the menu in the main menu namespace and not the
> >> 'Debian' namespace; this seems like the easiest solution.
> 
> > +1
> 
> I don't think that the idea of superseding menu lacks support, it
> lacks people doing the work (and the coding part seems small compared
> to creating a mapping the categories, preferably in both directions,
> and come up with a sane policy). Also, this seems to be something to
> do shortly after a release...

Which makes coming up with sane policy around now a good idea,
methinks.  (So development can be underway and implemented by lenny+1).

Regards,

Daniel

-- 
And that's my crabbing done for the day.  Got it out of the way early, 
now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or 
strangle cute bunnies or something.   -- Michael Devore
GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C  http://gnupg.org
No more sea shells:  Daniel's Webloghttp://cshore.wordpress.com


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Bernhard R. Link]

* Daniel Dickinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [080705 09:05]:
> xdg .desktop-based menus are not covered by policy.

I think this is an important point to acknowledge by all people wanting
to see more .desktop files: There is no policy how to use the
fields in them. Currently most people just copy the files from their
upstreams. That cannot work to get a coherent system. When Debian
packages use .desktop files from other packages in Debian, there should
be a Debian policy what those files may contain and what not.

The system also misses massively documentation. Perhaps it got better
in between, but last time I looked it totally missed any documentation
except and lengthy document that seemed to be targeted on writers
of menu programs displaying. Nothing how to overwrite items as user,
not wher to put them to test them, not even the actual paths (only
some placeholders without explanation everywhere).

> The main menu (meaning the primary menu used for program selection; I
> don't include quick access menus which have a small selection of often
> used programs) should either be the debian-menu or all packages which
> are supposed to have menu entires should also be required to
> supply .desktop files.
>
> Having a dual-menu scheme in policy is ugly.
>
> Currently the debian-menu is a submenu of the main menu, called
> 'Debian'.

This is indeed very ugly. But I think that is not so much a technical
problem, but more a problem of different opinions what a menu should
be like.

Because from what I gathered in the previous discussions about this,
an important reason gnome and kde maintainers refuse to use the Debian
menu is that then all the programs (even the text and "ugly" X programs)
would be in the menu equal to the other ones.
Switching to .desktop files would of course not fix that, as then all
the other programs would have .desktop files, too.

The Debian menu system could easily be extended to have some more tags
describing such properties (perhaps some ShowAlsoInKDENoviceMode tag
or whatever), but that would need an honest discussion about the aims.

> desktops that want to have .desktop entries for specific programs ought
> to be responsible for creating the code that merges the debian main
> menu with their main menu (e.g. in menu-xdg), rather than forcing every
> other application in debian to do their work for them.

I think the easiest solution would be to have some additional tag that
menu-xdg uses to filter out menu entries that also have a .desktop file.
(hopefully it already has, that only needs documentation, otherwise it
should be added), and then policy should say that each package should use
this tag to specifiy which entries in the Debian menu are duplicated by a
.desktop file.

Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
-- 
"Never contain programs so few bugs, as when no debugging tools are available!"
Niklaus Wirth


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Charles Plessy]

Le Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 10:54:30AM +0200, Thomas Viehmann a écrit :
> it lacks people doing the work

Hi all

If the Debian menu system replaces the .menu format by the .desktop
format for its files, I volunteer to work hard on helping the
transition.

Using natively the .desktop format would suppress the need for
maintaining two files in parallel in many cases.

Let's use standards when possible.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Russ Allbery]

Charles Plessy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> If the Debian menu system replaces the .menu format by the .desktop
> format for its files, I volunteer to work hard on helping the
> transition.
>
> Using natively the .desktop format would suppress the need for
> maintaining two files in parallel in many cases.
>
> Let's use standards when possible.

My recommendation would be to start by writing the standard that you
believe Debian should follow for those files.  Just referencing the XDG
standard isn't sufficient for reasons pointed out in other threads, but
certainly XDG is a place to start.  I expect such a standard would point
to XDG and then add additional specific interpretation and guidelines,
mention any additional keys that Debian wants to support that aren't in
the standard, and provide more specific instructions on how to use the
category system produced upstream.

Such a document could be developed in a way similar to how the proposed
new copyright document is being developed, and then someone could
implement Lintian checks based on it and the existing .desktop file checks
and use those to get an idea of how much archive work is required to adopt
the new standard.

I think that writing a policy is the first necessary step and is the main
thing required to move this conversation beyond a constantly recurring
debian-devel thread and towards something that we can implement.  Just
saying "we should use .desktop files" is not sufficient; the standard
isn't clear, Debian isn't following the standard currently, and there's no
migration strategy.  Closing those gaps is hard and necessary work, and
until someone has a chance to do that work, this will stay stuck at the
recurring conversation stage.

Personally, I think that in the abstract moving Debian from a home-grown
and locally-specified menu format towards a standard that we can share
with other distributions and with upstream is a good idea, but there's a
huge gap between current reality and that possible ideal world.

-- 
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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Josselin Mouette]

Le samedi 05 juillet 2008 à 02:42 -0400, Daniel Dickinson a écrit :
> Gnome, KDE, and XFCE are the the top three desktops used in debian and
> cover most users of desktops in debian.
> 
> They all use xdg .desktop-based menus as their main menu.

The last time this discussion was raised up, the clear consensus was
that, at least for the GNOME menu, the primary goals of the xdg-based
menu system and those of the Debian menu are fundamentally different.
The GNOME menu is aimed towards usability, and the Debian menu is aimed
towards completeness. Given the capabilities of the GNOME panel (for
which adding submenus is neither easy nor efficient in terms of
usability), the limitations of the XDG system (for which it is not
possible to define “views” including or excluding some categories) and
the restrictions of the Debian menu system (no i18n support, 32x32 XPM
icons, strict hierarchy), these goals are simply not compatible.

Therefore, I still feel that, despite it being a big mess, the current
situation is the best:
  * the default menu contains only what is needed, and we are still
hunting down entries that are useless to make them not show up
by default;
  * users wanting the Debian menu and its gazillions of entries
including window managers, terminal emulators and shell
interpreters can enable it easily in the menu editor;
  * those really wanting only the Debian menu can replace
gnome-applications.menu by debian-menu.menu.

If you want this to change, you need to seriously think about evolutions
to both XDG and Debian menu systems, to convince fd.o and the Debian
menu maintainer to implement them, and to find a good way to present
them in a nice way in the main menu and in a menu editor. None of these
tasks are simple.

-- 
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: :' :  We are debian.org. Lower your prices, surrender your code.
`. `'   We will add your hardware and software distinctiveness to
  `-our own. Resistance is futile.


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Tilo Schwarz]

On Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:28:15 +0200, Josselin Mouette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:



Therefore, I still feel that, despite it being a big mess, the current
situation is the best:
  * the default menu contains only what is needed, and we are still
hunting down entries that are useless to make them not show up
by default;
  * users wanting the Debian menu and its gazillions of entries
including window managers, terminal emulators and shell
interpreters can enable it easily in the menu editor;


As being a simple user I like having both.

Regards,

Tilo


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Joey Hess]

Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Therefore, I still feel that, despite it being a big mess, the current
> situation is the best:
>   * the default menu contains only what is needed, and we are still
> hunting down entries that are useless to make them not show up
> by default;
>   * users wanting the Debian menu and its gazillions of entries
> including window managers, terminal emulators and shell
> interpreters can enable it easily in the menu editor;
>   * those really wanting only the Debian menu can replace
> gnome-applications.menu by debian-menu.menu.
> 
> If you want this to change, you need to seriously think about evolutions
> to both XDG and Debian menu systems, to convince fd.o and the Debian
> menu maintainer to implement them

Actually, no, if you want this to change, you have only to do nothing.

People (many of them MOTUs from Ubuntu in my experience) are filing lots of
requestes for random packages to have .desktop files added to them, so
they appear in the gnome menu. The criteria seems to be "a program that
$RANDOM_USER would like to have on the menu and files a bug about ||
that $RANDOM_UPSTREAM ships a desktop file for, for whatever reason".

So, after sufficient time, the gnome menu will contain a random
assortment of the menu items that also appear in the debian menu. Not a
well-chosen and consistent assortment, but the kind of random assortment
that you get when you ignore policy and go off on your own way.

-- 
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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Mikhail Gusarov]

Twas brillig at 13:08:40 06.07.2008 UTC-04 when [EMAIL PROTECTED] did gyre and 
gimble:

 JH> So, after sufficient time, the gnome menu will contain a random
 JH> assortment of the menu items that also appear in the debian menu.

fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the matter
of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper subset of
the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications deeper in KDE
menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).

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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[James Vega]

On Sun, Jul 06, 2008 at 01:08:40PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > Therefore, I still feel that, despite it being a big mess, the current
> > situation is the best:
> >   * the default menu contains only what is needed, and we are still
> > hunting down entries that are useless to make them not show up
> > by default;
> >   * users wanting the Debian menu and its gazillions of entries
> > including window managers, terminal emulators and shell
> > interpreters can enable it easily in the menu editor;
> >   * those really wanting only the Debian menu can replace
> > gnome-applications.menu by debian-menu.menu.
> > 
> > If you want this to change, you need to seriously think about evolutions
> > to both XDG and Debian menu systems, to convince fd.o and the Debian
> > menu maintainer to implement them
> 
> Actually, no, if you want this to change, you have only to do nothing.
> 
> People (many of them MOTUs from Ubuntu in my experience) are filing lots of
> requestes for random packages to have .desktop files added to them, so
> they appear in the gnome menu. The criteria seems to be "a program that
> $RANDOM_USER would like to have on the menu and files a bug about ||
> that $RANDOM_UPSTREAM ships a desktop file for, for whatever reason".

I wouldn't be surprised if most of those had "NoDisplay=true" as one of
the fields[0].  While there may be a drive to add .desktop files to
packaging, there's a similar (sometimes overzealous, IME) drive to have
them not displayed by default.

[0] - 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuPackagingChanges?highlight=%28NoDisplay%29#head-5c07e3429829189474d24f6bcc1f2bee2f385e9a
-- 
James
GPG Key: 1024D/61326D40 2003-09-02 James Vega <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Joey Hess]

Mikhail Gusarov wrote:
> fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the matter
> of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper subset of
> the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications deeper in KDE
> menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).

That might work for gnome and kde, which are both fairly well defined,
to ignore menu items belonging to each other, but won't it be a game of
whack-a-mole for the rest of the things with menu entries?

(Just for example, I recently orphaned xgalaga, so its new maintainers
decided to do something about #432398, which I had been sitting on for
some time as this issue was not resolved. Now I check my gnome machine
and it has two galaga menu items in amoungst the standard gnome games.)

-- 
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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Sune Vuorela]

On 2008-07-06, Mikhail Gusarov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the matter
> of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper subset of
> the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications deeper in KDE
> menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).

I actually don't like this - just as I don't like the "kde" and "gnome"
package sections.

The users should have equal access to good programs.

Most people (no matter what desktop they are using) thinks that
 - amarok is better than the gnome equivalent (rythmbox?)
 - gimp is better than the kde equivalent (released versions of krita)
 - kontact and evolution - fits different to different people

At least, the KDE section seems to be a nice dumping ground for anything
that links against kdelibs - and in some cases just Qt.

/Sune


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Loïc Minier]

On Sun, Jul 06, 2008, Sune Vuorela wrote:
> On 2008-07-06, Mikhail Gusarov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the matter
> > of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper subset of
> > the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications deeper in KDE
> > menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).
> 
> I actually don't like this - just as I don't like the "kde" and "gnome"
> package sections.
> 
> The users should have equal access to good programs.

 Are you commenting on OnlyShowIn?  This feature is not meant to list
 all GNOME-ish apps in GNOME and KDE-ish apps in KDE.  It's meant to
 prevent some silly things to display across desktops.  For instance
 "gnome-about" (About GNOME) shouldn't show in the KDE menus, nor should
 the configuration applets for window management, keyboard etc. which
 touch GNOME specific GConf settings, or nautilus-cd-burner...

 There are "only" 47 desktop files with OnlyShowIn on my system out of
 218 desktop files installed, so it's not used too wildly I would say.

 (Some of these are probably bogus.)

> Most people (no matter what desktop they are using) thinks that
>  - amarok is better than the gnome equivalent (rythmbox?)

 there isn't "one" GNOME player; I don't know whether amarok is
 OnlyShowIn KDE, but Rhythmbox should show up in KDE menus, just like
 Banshee and I hope the other players as well (Quodlibet, etc.).

>  - gimp is better than the kde equivalent (released versions of krita)
>  - kontact and evolution - fits different to different people

 These don't have an OnlyShowIn here and should show up in KDE menus.

-- 
Loïc Minier


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Sune Vuorela]

On 2008-07-06, Loïc Minier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper subset of
>> > the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications deeper in KDE
>> > menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).
>> 
>> The users should have equal access to good programs.
>
>  Are you commenting on OnlyShowIn?  This feature is not meant to list

No. the thing that makes "moving Gnome/gtk application deeper in KDE
menu..."


/Sune


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Daniel Dickinson]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:13:30 +0700
Mikhail Gusarov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Twas brillig at 13:08:40 06.07.2008 UTC-04 when [EMAIL PROTECTED] did
> gyre and gimble:
> 
>  JH> So, after sufficient time, the gnome menu will contain a random
>  JH> assortment of the menu items that also appear in the debian menu.
> 
> fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the
> matter of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper
> subset of the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications
> deeper in KDE menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).

But that's just the point; there is no policy. 


-- 
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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Paul Wise]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> (Just for example, I recently orphaned xgalaga, so its new maintainers
> decided to do something about #432398, which I had been sitting on for
> some time as this issue was not resolved. Now I check my gnome machine
> and it has two galaga menu items in amoungst the standard gnome games.)

On my system it goes in the Games/Arcade menu. I think GNOME adapts
its menus to the number of items and the hints and categories in the
desktop files, doesn't seem to be a strict heirarchy like the Debian
menu is.

-- 
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pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Mikhail Gusarov]

Twas brillig at 18:52:35 06.07.2008 UTC-04 when [EMAIL PROTECTED] did gyre and 
gimble:

 >> fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the
 >> matter of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper
 >> subset of the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications
 >> deeper in KDE menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).

 DD> But that's just the point; there is no policy.

And that's the problem need to be solved, not the fd.o menu system or
Ubuntu MOTU - misusing the spec does not give the right to anyone to
blame spec or those who follow it.

-- 


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Daniel Dickinson]

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 13:41:30 -0400
Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Mikhail Gusarov wrote:
> > fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the
> > matter of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper
> > subset of the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications
> > deeper in KDE menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).
> 
> That might work for gnome and kde, which are both fairly well defined,
> to ignore menu items belonging to each other, but won't it be a game
> of whack-a-mole for the rest of the things with menu entries?
 
And depends on the package maintainer being cooperative.  Because there
is no debian policy on this if a package maintainer disagrees they
don't have to hide their menu entry.


-- 
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strangle cute bunnies or something.   -- Michael Devore
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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Daniel Dickinson]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:43:59 +0700
Mikhail Gusarov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Twas brillig at 18:52:35 06.07.2008 UTC-04 when [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> did gyre and gimble:
> 
>  >> fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the
>  >> matter of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper
>  >> subset of the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications
>  >> deeper in KDE menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).
> 
>  DD> But that's just the point; there is no policy.
> 
> And that's the problem need to be solved, not the fd.o menu system or
> Ubuntu MOTU - misusing the spec does not give the right to anyone to
> blame spec or those who follow it.

I concur.  And I plan on working on a policy, with plenty of input from
real debian developers since I'm not one yet, but have been using
debian for many years and have commented on and off for a few.  I hope
I have enough experience to have enough of a core to be useful for real
dd's (and I am planning on becoming one, but I need to work on packages
with and sponsored by other developers first).  I'm not waiting to I
get the seal of dd to try to do useful stuff.

Regards,

Daniel

-- 
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now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or 
strangle cute bunnies or something.   -- Michael Devore
GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C  http://gnupg.org
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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Daniel Dickinson]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:43:59 +0700
Mikhail Gusarov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Twas brillig at 18:52:35 06.07.2008 UTC-04 when [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> did gyre and gimble:
> 
>  >> fd.o menus are designed to allow distro-specific policy. It's the
>  >> matter of Debian KDE/Gnome packaging/menu policy to get the proper
>  >> subset of the packages in menu (e.g. moving Gnome/gtk applications
>  >> deeper in KDE menu and Qt/KDE - in Gnome one).
> 
>  DD> But that's just the point; there is no policy.
> 
> And that's the problem need to be solved, not the fd.o menu system or
> Ubuntu MOTU - misusing the spec does not give the right to anyone to
> blame spec or those who follow it.
> 

I mean I mostly concur; the spec is insufficiently defined for our
purposes so part of the policy proposal will be polishing the spec as
we use it in debian.  And the misuse of the spec is a consequence of a
perceived need for information that the spec doesn't provide, so we
need to make that information available on a debian-wide way (so
kde .desktop aren't only for kde, for instance, and ditto gnome).

Regards,

Daniel

-- 
And that's my crabbing done for the day.  Got it out of the way early, 
now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or 
strangle cute bunnies or something.   -- Michael Devore
GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C  http://gnupg.org
No more sea shells:  Daniel's Webloghttp://cshore.wordpress.com


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Josselin Mouette]

Le dimanche 06 juillet 2008 à 21:01 +0200, Loïc Minier a écrit :
>  There are "only" 47 desktop files with OnlyShowIn on my system out of
>  218 desktop files installed, so it's not used too wildly I would say.

Well, there should be much more than that, see #478286 which is still
here despite the fix being trivial.

-- 
 .''`.
: :' :  We are debian.org. Lower your prices, surrender your code.
`. `'   We will add your hardware and software distinctiveness to
  `-our own. Resistance is futile.


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Josselin Mouette]

Le lundi 07 juillet 2008 à 02:48 -0400, Daniel Dickinson a écrit : 
> And depends on the package maintainer being cooperative.  Because there
> is no debian policy on this if a package maintainer disagrees they
> don't have to hide their menu entry.

Yes, that’s probably the most important issue with the current
situation; nothing prevents the Java maintainer from adding a useless
"Java policy tool" icon in the Preferences menu, even though it has
nothing to do with the preferences and no one except a small number of
professional Java developers will have anything to do with it.

-- 
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: :' :  We are debian.org. Lower your prices, surrender your code.
`. `'   We will add your hardware and software distinctiveness to
  `-our own. Resistance is futile.


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Bill Allombert]

On Sun, Jul 06, 2008 at 01:08:40PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > Therefore, I still feel that, despite it being a big mess, the current
> > situation is the best:
> >   * the default menu contains only what is needed, and we are still
> > hunting down entries that are useless to make them not show up
> > by default;
> >   * users wanting the Debian menu and its gazillions of entries
> > including window managers, terminal emulators and shell
> > interpreters can enable it easily in the menu editor;
> >   * those really wanting only the Debian menu can replace
> > gnome-applications.menu by debian-menu.menu.
> > 
> > If you want this to change, you need to seriously think about evolutions
> > to both XDG and Debian menu systems, to convince fd.o and the Debian
> > menu maintainer to implement them
> 
> Actually, no, if you want this to change, you have only to do nothing.
> 
> People (many of them MOTUs from Ubuntu in my experience) are filing lots of
> requestes for random packages to have .desktop files added to them, so
> they appear in the gnome menu. The criteria seems to be "a program that
> $RANDOM_USER would like to have on the menu and files a bug about ||
> that $RANDOM_UPSTREAM ships a desktop file for, for whatever reason".
> 
> So, after sufficient time, the gnome menu will contain a random
> assortment of the menu items that also appear in the debian menu. Not a
> well-chosen and consistent assortment, but the kind of random assortment
> that you get when you ignore policy and go off on your own way.

I agree with you, but I am only the 'Debian menu maintainer' and I do
not have time or interest to maintain the .desktop files in Debian.
Instead people (not you) ask me transparently to stop maintaining menu
and maintain the .desktop files instead, but no one is willing to do
the work. (And of course .desktop is about 10% of the XDG spec).

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Imagine a large red swirl here. 


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Charles Plessy]

Le Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 12:35:34PM -0700, Russ Allbery a écrit :
> 
> 
> I think that writing a policy is the first necessary step and is the main
> thing required to move this conversation beyond a constantly recurring
> debian-devel thread and towards something that we can implement.  Just
> saying "we should use .desktop files" is not sufficient; the standard
> isn't clear, Debian isn't following the standard currently, and there's no
> migration strategy.  Closing those gaps is hard and necessary work, and
> until someone has a chance to do that work, this will stay stuck at the
> recurring conversation stage.

Le Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 09:44:29PM +0200, Bill Allombert a écrit :
> 
> I am only the 'Debian menu maintainer' and I do
> not have time or interest to maintain the .desktop files in Debian.
> Instead people (not you) ask me transparently to stop maintaining menu
> and maintain the .desktop files instead, but no one is willing to do
> the work. (And of course .desktop is about 10% of the XDG spec).


Hi all,

>From my maintainer point of view, the current situation leads to
maintain in parallel two files with similar information and different
syntax, with the main difference being that in the .desktop -> .menu
conversion the translations are discarded. The big advantage of the
.desktop format is also that it can be forwarded upstream, so that it
reduces the complexity of our packages and is useful to the whole
communauty. This is exactly the contrary of adding a burden on the
Debian maintainers and Bill.

I think that Russ is very pessimistic on the quality of the XDG
desktop entry sepcification. It uses a simple syntax and 18 different
keys, only 4 of them being required. Many of the Lintian errors noted
earlier in this thread are related to the desktop menu specification,
which is a separate document.

http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/
http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/

Now we are close to Lenny release, and there is enough to keep us very
busy until September, but after this, if Bill is interested, how about
writing a DEP (Debian Enhancement Proposal)?

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian-Med packaging team,
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Russ Allbery]

Charles Plessy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I think that Russ is very pessimistic on the quality of the XDG desktop
> entry sepcification. It uses a simple syntax and 18 different keys, only
> 4 of them being required. Many of the Lintian errors noted earlier in
> this thread are related to the desktop menu specification, which is a
> separate document.

> http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/

Russ formed his opinion by attempting to write code to the desktop entry
specification without additional reference to existing implementations and
watching it not work in the real world with real desktop entries.  That's
the acid test of a standard and the XDG desktop entry specification didn't
fare well.

The menu specification has other problems, but I am indeed also
complaining about the XDG desktop entry specification and specifically
saying that the desktop files in Debian do not universally comply with it,
that it is unclear and underspecified, and that it needs clarity and
additional work to be usable for a Debian policy.

I do think that if we had such a standard and additional checks and the
intention to enforce it, most of the problems with the desktop files in
/usr/share/applications could be relatively quickly cleaned up.  (The
*.desktop files outside of /usr/share/applications are a whole different
problem and are mostly a disaster from a compliance with the specification
perspective, but that may not be an issue; most of the ones outside of
that tree are legitimately used for internal purposes by different desktop
systems and aren't necessarily intended to comply with a spec.)

-- 
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED])   


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 03:15:28AM -0500, William Pitcock wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 02:42 -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> > For discussion:
> > 
> > Gnome, KDE, and XFCE are the the top three desktops used in debian and
> > cover most users of desktops in debian.
> > 
> > They all use xdg .desktop-based menus as their main menu.
> > 
> > xdg .desktop-based menus are not covered by policy.
> 
> Honestly, policy really needs to be updated to use the XDG standards
> menu spec, and every WM at this point really should be using them for
> their menus.
> 
> I think the debian-menu system should be seen as legacy, since it has
> been replaced with a standard used and supported by many upstreams and
> many other distros.
> 
> However, there's a few places where debian-menu is a better solution
> though. (It can be used to build menus for many WMs which do not support
> XDG, but honestly, do we need all these WMs?)

First of all: Yes, we do. Personally, I prefer not to use one of those
'desktop environment' thingies, since they annoy me. One of the main
reasons why people use Linux is choice; we should give them that choice,
not take it away and give users a pre-chewed monocultural environment
(if you want that, go to Windows, MacOS, or Ubuntu).

Second: XDG has less features than debian-menu currently does. For
instance, unless I'm mistaken it's not possible to specify in an XDG
.desktop file that a particular application is a curses or similar
application that requires an xterm or some such, which is possible with
menu. Due to this feature, it's also possible to have a package like
pdmenu for non-graphical systems.

> Another solution would be to make debian-menu build .desktop entries for
> the menu in the main menu namespace and not the 'Debian' namespace; this
> seems like the easiest solution.

The separation of a Debian menu and a "desktop" menu has been seen by
some as a feature. I remember a post on Planet Debian by one of the
GNOME maintainers (although I don't recall who it was) who explicitly
said that he would not like to see non-GNOME applications in the GNOME
menu but outside the Debian section. It is not unreasonable to state
that it may be confusing for people to have a menu containing both GNOME
and non-GNOME applications on a shared system; after all, different UI
toolkits often have different UI guidelines and concepts; mixing those
is not necessarily a good idea.

-- 
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  -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Paul Wise]

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 6:12 AM, Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Second: XDG has less features than debian-menu currently does. For
> instance, unless I'm mistaken it's not possible to specify in an XDG
> .desktop file that a particular application is a curses or similar
> application that requires an xterm or some such, which is possible with
> menu. Due to this feature, it's also possible to have a package like
> pdmenu for non-graphical systems.

Terminal=true exists, if it doesn't work, then that is a bug in the
implementation.

-- 
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pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Michelle Konzack]

Hello Josselin,

Am 2008-07-06 14:28:15, schrieb Josselin Mouette:
> the restrictions of the Debian menu system (no i18n support, 32x32 XPM
> icons, strict hierarchy), these goals are simply not compatible.

For "Fvwm" it is not right, since you can do

$[gt.&Hello]

and in the ~/.fvwm/config I use

LocalePath /usr/share/locale;fvwm-menu:+

I was working last year on this stuff, but since my whole network was
destrcted by an very heavy over-voltage the development has stoped.

Thanks, Greetings and nice Day/Evening
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant


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Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Gunnar Wolf]

Wouter Verhelst dijo [Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 12:12:23AM +0200]:
> The separation of a Debian menu and a "desktop" menu has been seen by
> some as a feature. I remember a post on Planet Debian by one of the
> GNOME maintainers (although I don't recall who it was) who explicitly
> said that he would not like to see non-GNOME applications in the GNOME
> menu but outside the Debian section. It is not unreasonable to state
> that it may be confusing for people to have a menu containing both GNOME
> and non-GNOME applications on a shared system; after all, different UI
> toolkits often have different UI guidelines and concepts; mixing those
> is not necessarily a good idea.

Maybe the menu name should be changed - All of the applications that
appear both in the desktop-specific and in the Debian menu are
Debian-provided. I think the Debian section should be renamed, to
avoid confusion, to "not desktop-integrated" or such.

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Re: Bug#484656: Fw: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Michelle Konzack]

Hello *,

while reading the forwarded messages in the BTS, I  am  supporting  Bill
to continue maintaining "menu" since the "desktop" is  hit  by  to  many
limitations.

I have an Add-On to "menu" called "tdfvwm-menu" which is  currently  not
updated since I have some problems here in France...

<http://devel.debian.tamay-dogan.net/tdfvwm-menu/>

However, I will continue updating my package AFTER release of Lenny...

Thanks, Greetings and nice Day/Evening
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
24V Electronic Engineer
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant



Am 2008-08-15 21:07:08, schrieb Daniel Dickinson:
> 
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 21:44:29 +0200
> From: Bill Allombert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jul 06, 2008 at 01:08:40PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > > Therefore, I still feel that, despite it being a big mess, the
> > > current situation is the best:
> > >   * the default menu contains only what is needed, and we are
> > > still hunting down entries that are useless to make them not show up
> > > by default;
> > >   * users wanting the Debian menu and its gazillions of entries
> > > including window managers, terminal emulators and shell
> > > interpreters can enable it easily in the menu editor;
> > >   * those really wanting only the Debian menu can replace
> > > gnome-applications.menu by debian-menu.menu.
> > > 
> > > If you want this to change, you need to seriously think about
> > > evolutions to both XDG and Debian menu systems, to convince fd.o
> > > and the Debian menu maintainer to implement them
> > 
> > Actually, no, if you want this to change, you have only to do nothing.
> > 
> > People (many of them MOTUs from Ubuntu in my experience) are filing
> > lots of requestes for random packages to have .desktop files added to
> > them, so they appear in the gnome menu. The criteria seems to be "a
> > program that $RANDOM_USER would like to have on the menu and files a
> > bug about || that $RANDOM_UPSTREAM ships a desktop file for, for
> > whatever reason".
> > 
> > So, after sufficient time, the gnome menu will contain a random
> > assortment of the menu items that also appear in the debian menu. Not
> > a well-chosen and consistent assortment, but the kind of random
> > assortment that you get when you ignore policy and go off on your own
> > way.
> 
> I agree with you, but I am only the 'Debian menu maintainer' and I do
> not have time or interest to maintain the .desktop files in Debian.
> Instead people (not you) ask me transparently to stop maintaining menu
> and maintain the .desktop files instead, but no one is willing to do
> the work. (And of course .desktop is about 10% of the XDG spec).
> 
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Bill. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> Imagine a large red swirl here. 
> 
> 
> -- 
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> -- 
> And that's my crabbing done for the day.  Got it out of the way early, 
> now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or 
> strangle cute bunnies or something.   -- Michael Devore
> GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C  http://gnupg.org
> No more sea shells:  Daniel's Webloghttp://cshore.wordpress.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
 END OF REPLIED MESSAGE 




-- 
Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/
# Debian GNU/Linux Consultant #
Michelle Konzack   Apt. 917  ICQ #328449886
+49/177/935194750, rue de Soultz MSN LinuxMichi
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