[PATCH] Menu Spec - Desktop specific menus

[Frederic Crozat]

Le mercredi 13 septembre 2006 à 14:13 -0400, Waldo Bastian a écrit :
> 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. Or even when a GNOME 
> application wants to do something with the menu while running under KDE, or 
> vice versa.
> 
> > 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.

Not all distributions :)

For Mandriva Linux 2007.0, we are storing GNOME and KDE specific files
in /etc/xdg/gnome (or /etc/xdg/kde ) and are setting XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
accordingly.

-- 
Frederic Crozat <fcrozat at mandriva.com>
Mandriva