Comment 8 for bug 1079953

The menu specification, which Unity follows, existed since long before
Unity was in the planning stages. Furthermore, the "Main Menu" application
used to edit menus is currently maintained by me, and I am not a Canonical
employee. They do not pay me any money, and I have no power over
Canonical's choices.

The bug here, about not working in Xubuntu, is a combination of two issues:
one is that the application did not respect the $XDG_MENU_PREFIX
environment, and the other is that due to legacy code, the application
depended on a binary installed as part of gnome-panel, so the desktop file
editor didn't work. Both have now been fixed. I do not know of Xubuntu's
update schedule, but a new unstable release that fixes the issue is out,
and the stable release will be part of GNOME 3.8. You can find it here:
ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/alacarte/3.7/

If you have other suggestions on how to improve the usability of the menu
editor application, please let me know, and I'll try to take your
suggestions into account.

On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 2:26 PM, BavarianPH <email address hidden> wrote:

> when ubuntu went to "Unity" (actually should be called "Chaos and
> Confusion"), and then lied about how happy users are about it,
> they destroyed everthing else easy.
>
> Such as the Main Menu.
>
> It can no longer be edited to users satisfaction.
>
> True it took hours to make my own appnames, to sort them to my own
> directories, just as I wanted;
> (because they refused to simplify them and just make them menu text files,
> that could easily be moved,
> copied, deleted, backed up, and especially renamed and re-iconed.
>
> But atleast I could personalize the menu and thereby streamline my
> activities.)
> Now, I am chained to the whims of the programmers, Linux masters, and just
> as I feared,
> IT'S REALLY JUST ALL ABOUT MONEY AND POWER, NO open NO freedom!
>
> FIX the MENU, I know YOU can, IF you wanted to!
> I cannot, I am only a dumb, unimportant user!!!
>
> BavarianPH
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1079953
>
> Title:
> Main Menu Editor alacarte is Completely Broken in xubuntu 12.10
>
> Status in “alacarte” package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Main Menu Editor alacarte is Completely Broken in xubuntu 12.10
>
> SYSTEM: Fresh install of xubuntu 12.10 (i386) using the official
> xubuntu .iso image, fully updated as of today.
>
> The 'Main Menu' editor (alacarte) is completely broken in xubuntu
> 12.10. Changes in the xubuntu Applications Menu made with alacarte
> are not effected. For example:
>
> -- Ticking/unticking boxes in alacarte does not stick.
> -- New menu items created with alacarte are not put in place.
> -- Menu items deleted with alacarte remain in place.
> -- Moving items from one menu folder to another with alacarte no longer
> works.
> -- .desktop files of any menu item opened (with or without (!) change)
> in alacarte simply accumulate in /home/[user]/.local/share/applications,
> without further effect.
> -- sudo alacarte in a terminal no longer works.
>
> It appears that alacarte is dependent on an item (gnome-desktop-item-
> edit) provided by the gnome-panel package which is not not compiled
> with alacarte and which is not otherwise installed under xubuntu.
> (See also Launchpad Bug #656735 --
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alacarte/+bug/656735).
> However, the full gnome-panel is an alien package under xfce, and it
> should not be installed under xubuntu as it pulls in a mass of
> redundant and undesirable non-xfce gnome desktop functionality.
> (Note: exo-utils for xfce,which provides exo-desktop-item-edit, IS
> fully installed but this does not resolve the above bugs.)
>
> Apart from these bugs, alacarte has limited functionality, it is prone
> to crashing, and it is awkward to handle. Many of these problems have
> a very long history and are never properly addressed.
>
> It seems better if the alacarte Applications Menu Editor in xubuntu
> would be replaced as standard (or at least as an option through the
> (x)ubuntu repos) by LXMenuEditor (http://lxmed.sourceforge.net/).
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alacarte/+bug/1079953/+subscriptions
>

--
  Jasper