gnome menu question

[Thomas Ng <thomas v ng sun com>]

hi:

I have a question on how to create customzied menus.  If this is not the 
correct alias to ask, do you know where should I post the question instead?
In order to create a new launcher in gnome, we need a new .desktop file 
for it.
To place it on the desktop, I can just put it in ~/.gnome-desktop

But if I want to put it in a customized menu, under the applications 
pull down menu, is it that I must create the applications.vfolder-info 
xml file under ~/.gnome2/vfolders, and put the .desktop file under 
~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications/?
Is there a way that I don't need to create and parse the xml file?  
(.vfolder-info)  Is there any native gnome API that will do the trick? 
(similar to IShellLink/IPersistFile on win32 for creating windows shortcut)
thanks,
Thomas