Bug#484656: Fw: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 00:12:23 +0200
From: Wouter Verhelst <wouter RemoveThis @debian.org>
To: William Pitcock <nenolod RemoveThis @sacredspiral.co.uk>
Cc: Daniel Dickinson <cshore RemoveThis @fionavar.ca>,
debian-policy RemoveThis @lists.debian.org, debian-devel RemoveThis @lists.debian.org Subject:
Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu


On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 03:15:28AM -0500, William Pitcock wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 02:42 -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> > For discussion:
> >
> > Gnome, KDE, and XFCE are the the top three desktops used in debian
> > and cover most users of desktops in debian.
> >
> > They all use xdg .desktop-based menus as their main menu.
> >
> > xdg .desktop-based menus are not covered by policy.
>
> Honestly, policy really needs to be updated to use the XDG standards
> menu spec, and every WM at this point really should be using them for
> their menus.
>
> I think the debian-menu system should be seen as legacy, since it has
> been replaced with a standard used and supported by many upstreams and
> many other distros.
>
> However, there's a few places where debian-menu is a better solution
> though. (It can be used to build menus for many WMs which do not
> support XDG, but honestly, do we need all these WMs?)

First of all: Yes, we do. Personally, I prefer not to use one of those
'desktop environment' thingies, since they annoy me. One of the main
reasons why people use Linux is choice; we should give them that choice,
not take it away and give users a pre-chewed monocultural environment
(if you want that, go to Windows, MacOS, or Ubuntu).

Second: XDG has less features than debian-menu currently does. For
instance, unless I'm mistaken it's not possible to specify in an XDG
..desktop file that a particular application is a curses or similar
application that requires an xterm or some such, which is possible with
menu. Due to this feature, it's also possible to have a package like
pdmenu for non-graphical systems.

> Another solution would be to make debian-menu build .desktop entries
> for the menu in the main menu namespace and not the 'Debian'
> namespace; this seems like the easiest solution.

The separation of a Debian menu and a "desktop" menu has been seen by
some as a feature. I remember a post on Planet Debian by one of the
GNOME maintainers (although I don't recall who it was) who explicitly
said that he would not like to see non-GNOME applications in the GNOME
menu but outside the Debian section. It is not unreasonable to state
that it may be confusing for people to have a menu containing both GNOME
and non-GNOME applications on a shared system; after all, different UI
toolkits often have different UI guidelines and concepts; mixing those
is not necessarily a good idea.

--
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
-- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22


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--
And that's my crabbing done for the day. Got it out of the way early,
now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or
strangle cute bunnies or something. -- Michael Devore
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