need customized XFCE menu

[Aymeric Mansoux]

The default XFCE menu is not very handy. We need a custom hardcoded top menu with the different applications sorted using categories that are a bit more explicit.

[danstowell (danstowell)]

Is it sufficient to separate the Audio and Video categories (rather than lumping them all in Multimedia)? The categories "Audio" "Video" "AudioVideo" are standard ones [1], so if we perform that split there's a good chance we can minimise the amount of hacking needed.

If I change my menu to split those then the "Audio" category works great to represent audio tools. The video tools are harder since AudioVideo is supposed to be a superset of Audio and Video, yet many video tools seem to categorise *only* as AudioVideo when it would make sense for them to announce themselves under Video too. Also, some stuff announces itself as "Video" when it's basically just audio software. e.g. this in Milkytracker's .desktop file (puredyne ppa):

   Categories=GNOME;AudioVideo;Audio;Video;

I'd suggest removing "Video" from that list.

This from cinelerra's .desktop file:

   Categories=Application;AudioVideo;Multimedia

I'd suggest adding "Video" to that list, which would be nice and hopefully uncontroversial if it could be pushed upstream.

If we can tidy this up a bit (inc upstream) then we can simply have an Audio menu listing things in category "Audio" and a Video menu listing things in category "Video" (would need to ensure nothing that only announced itself as "AudioVideo" was being missed).

[1]http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/1.0/apa.html

[danstowell (danstowell)]

Attaching a simple approach to separating audio and video menus. Audio menu is for everything categorised "Audio"; Multimedia menu built in part by excluding everything categorised "Audio". Gives a decent separation although some anomalies which could be fixed in the packages' .desktop files (MPlayer and Subtitle Editor probably best not in the audio menu, easiest to achieve by removing Audio category; Ecamegapedal, Jack rack, Jack time machine, JamMin, NtEd, Patchage, Vmpk should be added to Audio category).

[Aymeric Mansoux (aymeric)]

That's a great idea, I did not think about checking that!

We should try this approach in the next build (so you could commit the menu) and we make a blueprint to start tracking which packages needs fine tuning and we try to push that upstream?

[aleij (alejoduque)]

just tested here, works great, i was asking few days ago in #xfce4 and they said only the new and upcoming version of xfce4 will have a way to regenarate the menu automatically. I guess you did it manually dan?

[krgn (karsten-goto10)]

I added this to the broth stock as its already a good start. thanks dan!

[Aymeric Mansoux (aymeric)]

It seems to work fine but the Audio icon is broken in the menu which looks a bit clumsy ...

[danstowell (danstowell)]

Well that's because the icon theme changed in latest broth, to one which doesn't have "multimedia-volume-control", although that name is in the freedesktop.org icon naming specification, hmph :/

Changed it to use "preferences-desktop-multimedia" which gives a weird little audio whistle; that does at least exist in current ISO...