Re: new menu vfs backend

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 10:39:18PM -0500, Linas Vepstas wrote: 
> Mmmm, now that's interesting (and shows how I'm not keeping up with
> things).  Let me get this straight: somewhere, there's a magic VFS
> plugin that converts menus to VFS and back?  Is this what you're
> writing?   I'm a little nervous about launching nautilus to edit 
> menu, but, hey, its not a bad idea, it could grow on me ...

Yes, this is how it works in 2.0 and 2.2. Well, "works" anyway ;-)

The menu items are .desktop files in /usr/share/applications, and
their layout/arrangement into a menu is determined by an XML file.  In
current GNOME this XML file is in
/etc/gnome-vfs-2.0/something.vfolder-info, the new thing I'm working
on has a spec
http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu/draft/menu-spec/menu-spec.html
that explains how it all works. The new spec is similar in spirit to
the current stuff but different in most details.
 
> Umm, I know I should google this, but what's the story on things 
> like file meta-data?  My menu-editor had a spot in it for the 'tooltip'.
> I don't want to modify my report-file format to include a slot for
> a tooltip.  In a sense, 'tooltip' is a great bit of file meta-data...
> "what's this file conatin? in one sentance or less" Kind of like
> the 'leftmouse->properties->notes' field, except that that info 
> become the tooltip for my menu item.  (As well as a potential fly-over
> tip in nautilus).  Where  is the properties->notes data stored?  
> A quick scan of my filesystem didn't reveal where the metadata is ... 
> (and I can't find anything in gconf).  
> 
> In other words, my question is, "how can I use file metadata to
> store a menu tooltip"? 

I'm probably not the person to ask; this stuff is all in nautilus,
rather than in gnome-vfs, I think. Most of it dates from the Eazel
days.

For the main menu ("foot menu") the tooltips are in the .desktop file 
(the Comment field in there).

Havoc