Re: [gentoo-dev] [PROPOSAL] Menu system for all gentoo wm's.

[Igor Lev]

I think this would be great especially if there is a frontend that allows you to choose the location/name of each menu item or menu directory. You can have the defaults come in the ebuilds and then allow the user to change it either by hand or through a fronted program to keep the syntax intact. As long as there is both freedom in changing the default layout of the menus, choosing which packages we want in the menus and in choosing whether to go with this system at all I think this would be a great idea. 

-Igor
-------Original Message-------
From: Svyatogor <svyatogor@g.o>
Sent: 05/29/03 02:08 PM
To: gentoo-dev@g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] [PROPOSAL] Menu system for all gentoo wm's.

>
> Hello Folks!
I have recently been thinking on implementing the menu system for gentoo,
something like what we have in mandrake (I guess it came from debian).
At the moment when a user installs a new app he needs to figure out what
is
the name of the binary he needs and then add it to the menu of his window
manager(s). This is done automatically only if you're installing an app
for
your desktop (i.e. gnome apps on gnome, kde apps on kde).
The whole idea is make thins process automatic - the user installs a
programm
foo, log out back in and sees the menu entry in all window managers.

Here is my suggestion on who it should work.
On the system we have a central location for the menu, say /etc/menu.d/
Here all subfolders represent categories and files - menu entries
respectively. The file contains three entries, something like this:

Name=MyApp
Command=/usr/bin/myapp
Icon=icon.png

These entries are created when a pckage is merged by a special domenu
command
in a ebuild. E.g. domenu Editors, GVim, gvim
In addition to the categories folder the menu.d/ would contain a folder
"rules", which has the ebuild style files describing how the menus for
each
installed wm/de should be generated. It would look like this:

init_menu() {
#Do all nessecary init. here. Eg. touch the menu file.
}

start_menu() {
#Wright whatever should be in heading of the menu.
#Especially important for one file menus file fluxbox.
}

write_entry() {
#Ovious. Here we have ${Cat} ${Name} ${Com} vars defined and set.
}

end_menu() {
#whatever should be done to finish the menu.
}

Now the most important step: genrating users menu. First of all a user
should
have a choice of whether to use this system or not. If the user likes it
he
should add a call to syncmenu (a bash scipt) to the .bash_profile or
whatever
file.

When the syncmenu starts it first of all syncronises the ~/.menu with
/etc/menu.d (It will basically sync everything except the files that have
Custom tag - means edited by user and don't touch). Then this file sources
the files in the /etc/menu.d/rules and calls the functions in the order:
init, start, write (for every entry), end.

I guess the system is quite flexible and allows to support any wm,
irrespectively of the menu style it uses. However, before starting woking
on
it I just wanted to get some feedback on the idea.

Ok, waiting for your criticism ;)

--
Sergey Kuleshov <svyatogor@g.o>
Let the Force be with us!


--
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list

>

--
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list