Re: My Little Wish List for Gnome

[Erik Andersen <andersen xmission com>]

Quoting Ian Campbell <ijc25@cam.ac.uk>:
> 
> 
> > So rather than having a tag to "move emacs to editors" it is more a tag
> > that specifies the location. That's much the same as having a directory
> > structure. To be honest on this count I am not really bother, either way
> > works (only thing is - with a single directory with many files it might
> > take longer to open a particular file than with many dirs with few files -
> > since I beleive the dir scan is a linear search).
> 
> oops..
> I also meant to say that having a separate file for each app allows
> install progs/`make install` to just drop in a file to register
> themselves. Rather than parsing a file (which they would have to do if thy
> were replacing a previous version of themselves)
> 
> Ian.
> 

This is how the Debian menu system works.  Each package that want to show
up in the menu drops a file into /usr/lib/menu, and then any app that wants
to show a menu of the installed apps

Each package that want to show up in the menu drops a file into /usr/lib/menu,
and then it calls /usr/sbin/install-menu. Internally, install-menu calls 
/usr/bin/update-menus.  This then updates the config files for all apps 
registered in /etc/menu-methods (for instance window maker, afterstep, fvwm,
and little console program runner, etc...).  For example, a couple of sample 
entries in /usr/lib/menu look like:

master:andersee% cat /usr/lib/menu/vim
?package(vim):needs="text" section="Apps/Editors"  title="Vim" command="/usr/bin/vim"
master:andersee% cat /usr/lib/menu/elvis
?package(elvis): needs="text" section="Apps/Editors" \
        title="Elvis" command="/usr/bin/elvis -G termcap"
?package(elvis): needs="x11" section="Apps/Editors" \
        title="Elvis X11" command="/usr/bin/elvis -G x11"
master:andersee% cat /usr/lib/menu/emacs19
?package(emacs19):\
  needs="x11"\
  section="Apps/Editors"\
  title="Emacs 19"\
  command="/usr/bin/emacs19"\
  icon=/usr/share/emacs/19.34/etc/emacs.xbm

?package(emacs19):\
  needs="text"\
  section="Apps/Editors"\
  title="Emacs 19"\
  command="/usr/bin/emacs19"\
  icon=/usr/share/emacs/19.34/etc/emacs.xbm

The debian menu system (gratuitous plug) would work very well, and would
allow Gnome stuff to show up in the menus even for non-gnome compliant 
window managers like FVWM.  Check out 
	http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/admin/menu.html 
to look at the source.

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen   Web:    http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/ 
                   email:  andersee@debian.org
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