menu fixes

[Brennan W Stehling <brennan offwhite net>]

I have been following gnome as it has been improving and have also used
KDE quite a bit.  I thought up an improvement which will help both of them
and help new users who have never used X Windows before.

Basically, when I install Gnome or KDE it gives me a menu system full of
all kinds of applications.  Most of these I never use and I have to be
root in order to change this generalized menu.  It is not so bad for me,
but my brothers who are very new to it hate that they have so many apps to
choose from while they cannot easily find the ones they want.  I had to
install and update their menus so it would work for them.

I thought about this and figured it would be better to change this system
and allow people to update their entire menu and default the settings of a
newly created menu based on profiles.  Here is how it would work.

When applications are installed they would become registered with the
system.  FreeBSD has their package management system and RPM does much of
the same.  One problem is that when I install a new app my brothers are
not aware of it unlesss I tell them, and then I have to tell them exactly
how to edit it into their menu.  If the new app was registered with a
menu system a user could look through a virtual application catalog and
select ones to add to their menu, or to take one off their menu.
Checkboxes next to each application summary would indicate if they have it
in their menu not.

So when a user logs into X Windows for the first time they would be asked
what kind os user they happen to be: designer, programmer, business,
games.  Based on that it would turn on or off a series of apps and
structure the menu to their needs.  After they select their profile they
can then edit it further to add and remove any app as they like.

Another matter to this system would be categorization of applications.
Right now Netscape is placed under Applications in a very general way
while I want it inside the Internet folder.  I imagine a first run of this
system would allow for top level categories and a later version could
allow for sub-categories.

I would like to create this software myself but I have not programmed
anything for gnome yet.  I had some C in school but have mainly been doing
Perl programming for the last two years.

Perhaps I could act as a project coordinator for any gnome programmers who
like this idea.  Along the way I am pretty sure I will pick up the trade a
bit and can start helping along.  I have the development hardware here and
will give anyone an account that would like to start development.

The machine is...

PIII 550
4.5 Gig Ultra Wide SCSI (Seagate)
20 Gig IDE (Western Digital)
64 mb ram

I am running FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE right now and hope to upgrade to 4.0 in
a month or so to include the linux threads package.

Anyone up for this project?

Brennan Stehling - web developer and sys admin
projects: www.onmilwaukee.com | www.sncalumni.com

fortune:
"Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war."
		-- Napolean