Ubuntu 13.10 Main Menu editor Problem

[tecknomage]

I just ungraded to *Ubuntu 13.10* using ) *Gnome (classic) Desktop*.

The [Main Menu] editor does NOT work properly.

I cannot ADD items.

I CAN edit and move existing items only.

[tecknomage (tecknode)]

OPPS - Also [Main Menu] editor does NOT work properly in *Ubuntu Unity*.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1244087/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[tecknomage (tecknode)]

TWO UPDATES:

1 - I'm using Genome Flashback desktop

2 - Found out that my menu has a FOLDER with the same icon as [Applications] called [Other].

This [Other] folder has all my old menu options, AND whenever I try to [Add] an Item inside a folder (example [Games],) it is added to [Other].

In other words, when I try to [Add} an Item to folder [Games] it gets added to folder [Other].

[Roland65 (roland65)]

Same problem here. Each new menu item is mistakenly added to the Other category.
It is also not possible to add a submenu to the main menu.
Very annoying bug.
Thanks,
RB

[tecknomage (tecknode)]

UPDATE

After copying all the Launcher lines for all the ones in [Other] that I needed to keep into a Text doc.....

I deleted the folder [Other].

Still CANNOT use [New Item].

REMINDER - This seems to be a problem with ALL desktops (GNOME Flashback, GNOME Classic, Ubuntu Unity).

[tecknomage (tecknode)]

FOUND A WORKAROUND

1) Your menus are {file-name}.desktop in /usr/share/applications/

2) You can use a text editor (I use gedit) to create your {file-name}.desktop files and save to documents folder.

Then use a root-enabled file manager (I use Krusader, the twin-panels make this easier) to move or copy {file-name}.desktop to /usr/share/applications/

Waite few seconds for the new menu entry to be integrated. That's it.

EXAMPLES that worked:

EschalonBookTwo.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Icon[en_US]=/home/tecknomage/Pictures/Logos/Eschalon.jpg
Name[en_US]=Eschalon Book-2
Exec=padsp /home/tecknomage/bin/eschalon_book_2/eschalon_book_2
Name=Eschalon Book-2
Icon=/home/tecknomage/Pictures/Logos/Eschalon.jpg
Categories=Game;Application;

-----------------------

TheCave.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Icon[en_US]=steam_icon_221810
Name[en_US]=The Cave
Exec=/usr/bin/steam steam://rungameid/221810
Name=The Cave
Icon=steam_icon_221810
Categories=Game;Application;

****IMPORTANT: In "Categories" the entry "Game;" will be in red because it is NOT correct in the system, BUT using the real "Games" did NOT work. Have no idea why, just that the two examples above did work.

This points to the problem with the menu editor utility [Main Menu], [Add Item], it does NOT set Categories at all.

The easiest fix for the maintainer is to ADD a dialog entry line for "Categories" so we can either manually enter it or show a drop-down with the default in accordance to the hi-lighted choices in the left-half panel of [Main Menu] utility.

The reason that my old menus (in the [Other] folder that I deleted) was the installers must have categorized them but this version of [Main Menu] did not pick that up. I note that EVERY menu item from Ubuntu 13.04 was in [Other] including ones that were all ready in my menus in Ubuntu 13.10.

I now have back all the missing menu items that were on my Ubuntu 13.04

[Jasonr (jasonrusmisel)]

I'm using gnome-flashback and not unity...

I tried the same approach as Tecknomage for my .local/share/applications versions of the menu items. I found that even though there is a Group calles Games, having Games in the Categories simply put the menu entry into "Other".

Switching the Category to "Game" rather than "Games" fixed it. I still don't have the Icons working however.

[Jasonr (jasonrusmisel)]

It looks like the issue with Icons is that the image picker drops the file suffix when it saves menu entry. I manually modified the alacarte-made.desktop file and added the appropriate ending to file specified for the icon and the image now shows properly.

For example, I pointed the menu editor to a ~/games/minecraft/icons/myminecrafticon.png, but the menu editor saved it as /home/me/games/minecraft/icons/myminecrafticon without the png.

It's hard not to be critical of the coder who failed to test this functionality - it's pretty simple to see that it's busted.

[Kyle Tinker (shamrock-computing)]

This is annoying to me. I can't even find another GUI alternative, as menulibre isn't supported in 13.10. Can someone please fix it?

Yes, I could manually edit via the text editor, but this is pretty basic functionality that should work.

[Fixitman Arizona (fixitmanarizona)]

Yes, very annoying, they've even removed the submenu for system settings in Xubuntu. I had it back and lost it again. Alacarte is only showing the menu items for any particular desktop: ie Kubunu or XFCE and not all applications like it used to, to add. Synapse is only showing particular applications for Gnome or Xfce in Xubuntu.. not KDE applications, which I want to use. I've painfully (manually) added a few, but this is ridiculous.
How about an option to show ALL programs on the system (not by default, but if you want to) instead of just the distribution specific ones? (Show generic no longer works.) Is it because Linux is getting so diversified that everyone HAS to do it their own way and you can't HAVE a generic place to put menu items anymore?

[Maura (mdhausman)]

Disclaimer: I'm a student, and not a Python programmer, and have only been looking at Alacarte's code for an hour and a half or so. So this might all be totally off-base.

Regarding the missing icon extensions, I think I found where it's happening.

In ItemEditor.py (found here: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/saucy/alacarte/saucy/view/head:/Alacarte/ItemEditor.py ), line 68:

def set_icon_string(image, icon):
    if GLib.path_is_absolute(icon):
        image.props.file = icon
    else:
        image.props.icon_name = strip_extensions(icon)

I did some testing, and an icon path that got stripped on saving in Main Menu return True when passed to GLib.path_is_absolute. So if icon is being passed to set_icon_string properly, then we shouldn't have this issue.

The only place where we see set_icon_string used is on line 144:

def set_icon(self, ctl, name):
        try:
            val = self.keyfile.get_string(DESKTOP_GROUP, name)
        except GLib.GError:
            pass
        else:
            set_icon_string(self.builder.get_object(ctl), val)

The value returned by self.keyfile.get_string(DESKTOP_GROUP, name) must not be evaluating True in GLib.path_is_absolute. Why? No idea. And that's about all the sleuthing I can do at 1 am. I might take another look soon, though.

[hariprasad (hariprasad)]

I have the same problem in Gnome. All attempts to create a new item are in "Other" group menu in "Main Menu" regardless in which group menu can i create a new item. I tried to find out some instruction, how to move items manually, but i wasn't successful. It must be somewhere some file, where is that hierarchy described, but i am not able to find out it. There is really no way, how to manually move items from one menu to another one?

[Michael G. (mggth)]

I can confirm this bug.

[Viktor Mileikovskyi (v-mil)]

I can not perform any editions. No moving, no folder creation. Starting from a terminal causes only one message repeated twice:

(alacarte:13511): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_accel_label_set_accel_closure: assertion 'gtk_accel_group_from_accel_closure (accel_closure) != NULL' failed

And nothing else in terminal window. Tested on Ubuntu 13.10 X64 fresh install and upgraded from 13.04.

The same problem in OpenSUSE discussed at
http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/486011-Can-t-edit-menu-or-item-properties-in-Alacarte

With best regards.
Viktor.

[hariprasad (hariprasad)]

To move menu item from one submenu to another it is needed to know the name of destination submenu. It is in property Categories, i.e. Categories=Application;Development;Java;IDE. Desktop (.desktop suffix) files are located on two places:
~/.local/share/applications locally in your home and /usr/share/applications globally. Compare the both directories, find out appropriate files and synchronize them. I think, that they should be the same. In my case both files were identical, but in /usr/share/applications was attribute Hidden=true, so i remove it to be both files identical.

The second case is, if the .desktop file is only in local menu. Check it and add Categories property if needed. Remove Hidden property or set it false. Check duplicities (many items has name alacarte-made-nn.desktop) check them, rename them, remove duplicities!

[Andrei (andrei-doom)]

This is getting ridiculous... if this has high priority, confirmed by 22 people, why the hell is it still a problem... ?

[Markcortbass (markcortbass)]

I confirm that this application is EOL and not functional anymore. Menulibre is a very great solution!
https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/precise/menulibre/

[tecknomage (tecknode)]

On Sat, 19 Apr 2014 18:58:51 -0000, you wrote:

Q> I confirm that this application is EOL and not functional anymore. Menulibre is a very great solution!
Q> https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/precise/menulibre/

Also, after upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS the [Main Menu] utility
works as it should.

--
=========== Tecknomage ===========
   Computer Systems Specialist
         IT Technician
           (retired)
         San Diego, CA

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package alacarte - 3.11.91-1

---------------
alacarte (3.11.91-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload.

  [ Barry Warsaw ]
  * d/control.in: Remove unnecessary Build-Depends on python-support.
    (dh_python2 is actually used anyway, closes: #732397)

  [ Dmitry Shachnev ]
  * New upstream bugfix release (closes: #742053, LP: #1298068).
    - Fixes issues with items/menus creation (closes: #731458,
      LP: #1235994, #1244087, #1259717).
    - Help button removed (LP: #1249603).
  * Use the man page provided by upstream.

 -- Andreas Henriksson <email address hidden> Tue, 03 Jun 2014 14:28:39 +0200

[Steve Hoard (steve-hoard)]

I have ubuntu 14.04 LTS. The Main Menu help button is still visible in the bottom left corner. When pressed gives a error message not a valid pointer. Still can't move blender app from "Othe"r to "Graphics".
thanks

[MikeR (mike-rechtman)]

Problems carry over to 14.04
Trying alacarte and menulibre I can create a new folder, e.g. Documentation or Backup, but cannot move items into the folder, so that it remains invisible.
In alacarte and in menulibre I see folders (Sundry, Utilities, Web develpment) which include items, but do not show up when I click on Applications.

This used to be so simple until they went and "improved" it!!

[leanid chaika (leanid-chaika)]

Bug still exist in Ubuntu 14.10 Can't create new Items! Disappointing in ubuntu...

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Comments #21 and #22 refer to releases now EOL.
No further comments for over four years.
Closing Papercuts task as issue fixed as per comment #20.