[PATCH] Menu Spec - Desktop specific menus

[James Richard Tyrer]

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.

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.

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.

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?	

-- 
JRT