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charlieg
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2002 1:18 pm    Post subject: Solution for automating menu generation: menu.mask Reply with quote

This is a follow-up to the following thread (reading not required):
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=10148&highlight=menu+update

Having thought about this, I believe I have come up with the solution. :idea:

People pointed out the following problems:
- Some DEs/WMs have their own structured menus eg KDE
- Some people would want their own menus and not automatically generated ones
- Having ebuilds determine the menu leaves a lot of work to be done with existing ebuilds

So I propose the following:
- Have a file 'menu.mask' in /usr/portage/profiles/ which will be the axis of generating the menu.
- Packages not in menu.mask will be ignored
- The user can have an optional menu.mask with settings to override as desired those in menu.mask
- The mask file specifies both menu structure and application placement within the menu structure
- Packages are specified as [package name][min version] [exception list]
- If, for a given package, an installed wm or de is not specified as an exception, then it is applied to that wm's or de's menu
- If there is a specified exception then the package is applied to the menu as per the rules of the exception or, if no rule is specified, is ignored for the particular wm or de
- If a package appears in the users' menu.mask then it is ignored in /usr/portage/profiles/menu.mask and the settings in the users' menu.mask are used. (btw why can't you do this is package.mask!?)

Example menu.mask (please note this is PSEUDO and hence specifics are probably wrong etc):
Code:

# The following tree defines the menu structure
#
<root1>
    <menuid1>
        icon=x
        text=submenu 1
    </menuid1>
    <menuid2>
        icon=y
        text=submenu 2
        <menuid3>
            icon=z
            text=submenu 3
        </menuid3>
    </menuid2>
</root1>

<root2>
    <menuid4>
        icon=a
        text=submenu 4
    </menuid4>
<root2>

# Somehow specify an alternative menu root
# If unspecified, rootx defaults to menu root for wm
#
kde root1={/kdemenu/other programs}
kde root2={/kdemenu/testing}
gnome root2={/gnomemenu/testing}

<menuid1>
packageA_1.1 kde gnome # ie except for kde and gnome
packageB kde
</menuid1>

<menuid2>
packageA_1.3 kde={/kdemenu/testing} # put it elsewhere for kde
</menuid2>


Any opinions?
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klieber
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2002 1:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Eh...I remember reading somewhere (though I can't remember where) that automatic menus was already under development. If so, you may want to jump over to gentoo-dev on IRC and see if you can find out more about it there.

--kurt
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thinair
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2002 2:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It would be really a good think... because actually I think it's difficult to choose to activate masked package...
If you put ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arch" you have no control about masked package... I don't like that...

I had a bad experience with that...I put it in my make.conf file... and made sometimeslater ... emerge system -u (and gcc was updated to gcc-3.2-rc2 , now I am returning to gcc-3.2-rc1)
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2002 8:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Following up on klieber's post, my understanding was that the Debian menu system was "coming soon to a Gentoo near you".
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 12, 2002 12:39 pm    Post subject: Re: Debian Menu System Reply with quote

I get the impression it's not as customisable as the option I've offered here. Plus here you can add your own custom entries to your menus very easily, and the menus are customised according to the WM.

I'm going to see if I can hack a 'proof of concept' version once my ADSL link comes through at home, and see if it's warmly accepted.

:)
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klieber
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 12, 2002 12:41 pm    Post subject: Re: Debian Menu System Reply with quote

charlieg wrote:
I'm going to see if I can hack a 'proof of concept' version once my ADSL link comes through at home, and see if it's warmly accepted.

Choice is (almost) always a good thing. Looking forward to giving your system a spin.

--kurt
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2003 10:33 am    Post subject: Still Reply with quote

I've still not had a chance to do this yet, although that doesn't mean I no longer plan to.

I've just got to find an evening to put aside to hammer out a proof of concept and give it to somebody. That and Seemant told me to wait for the new XML oriented portage to be finished up and done.
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noff
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 2:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think it would be better to build functionality into portage to make it more automatic. Then you could USE "menu" and have them automatically put in KDE or Gnome, at least to start. You could have a menus.conf that would say in KDE a graphics program -> Graphics menu. A similar form to charlieg's, but have each ebuild classify itself, then allow you to tell which menu gets what type. This system would require newer versions of ebuilds but that is bound to happen.

I really think that the lack of functionality hurts gentoo and if an intelligent system-wide menu system were implemented it would be a great boon.
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 9:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't like the idea of making ebuilds specify where to go in various menus.

It sounds complicated. Not to mention, like you say, it requires direct changes to portage.
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lanius
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2003 10:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So are there any efforts of putting such a menu system in gentoo. I would like it, because it's really annoying to put all this apps into the icewm menu.

But for the structure I propose a different one. There are .desktop files and they are the base of the menus for both, kde and gnome. So I think every app should supply such a .desktop file and than we need some wrappers for the other windowmanagers like icem or fluxbox.

mfg, heino :)
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StrCrssd
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2003 5:07 pm    Post subject: Menuing.... Reply with quote

I really don't care which menu system gets implmented, as long as we can TURN IT OFF. I have played with Debian in the past and have found it very, very difficult to disable their menu system (or even hide packages from their menu system).

The only thing I ask is that whatever system we decide to use is OPTIONAL and, by default, not included in the base install.

Thanks, and sorry for digressing (slightly).
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lanius
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 31, 2003 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think that can easily be done by setting a useflag or a portage option. But somebody should start to code such a system. I can also help in doing this but it should be something official so that it will be included in portage.
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seemant
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 06, 2003 12:23 pm    Post subject: Menus Reply with quote

OK, it's like this. We played around with debian/drake's menu system. Didn't like it, really, the syntax is -- well "um" is probably the best way to describe it. Then we threw around the idea of XML'ifying menu entries. Then, Alastair Tse (liquidx) pointed out that GNOME and KDE are already confroming to the freedesktop.org standards. Now, that's something that we can handle -- since all the desktop entries for those DE specific apps are/will be in that format anyway. So, it remains then to create transformer scripts to convert that format to <insert your favourite wm here>'s format. Apart from that, if users really think it should be OPTIONAL, then we''ll introduce a USE flag for it to be done in postinst() for the packages. So, consider me your point man for this, and fire away ideas, scripts, etc into bug 18638. In my plan, this was not going to be a part of the 1.4 release. So we're looking at 1.5 or whatever release comes next.

Looking forward to y'all's input.


EDIT: For the lazy like me, I added a link to the bug report. -- pjp
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lanius
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 06, 2003 5:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I love the idea of using the freedesktop standard and I really think this menu entries should be optional, it would be no problem at all and could be set as standard :) If you need help with scripting, I'm here :)
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 9:12 am    Post subject: Re: Menus Reply with quote

seemant wrote:
Alastair Tse (liquidx) pointed out that GNOME and KDE are already confroming to the freedesktop.org standards.

As nice as it is to adhere to the freedesktop.org standards, it's always nice to have it customisable, especially so with a menu.

You might even want a different menu layout according to whatever DE you are using... or even whatever user you are logged in as.
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 9:37 am    Post subject: ok Reply with quote

but how would you propoose to do that?
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lanius
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 12:26 pm    Post subject: Re: Menus Reply with quote

charlieg wrote:
seemant wrote:
Alastair Tse (liquidx) pointed out that GNOME and KDE are already confroming to the freedesktop.org standards.

As nice as it is to adhere to the freedesktop.org standards, it's always nice to have it customisable, especially so with a menu.

You might even want a different menu layout according to whatever DE you are using... or even whatever user you are logged in as.


You can still customize your menu via your personal .kde or .gnome directories.

If you want a different menu according to your DE, you can unset the menu useflag and manage it completly on your own.
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 3:35 pm    Post subject: Re: Menus Reply with quote

heino wrote:
If you want a different menu according to your DE, you can unset the menu useflag and manage it completly on your own.


Actually, it wouldn't be particularly difficult to produce a better method.

I've talked to seemant about this, but I've yet to follow through on it (but, as ever, planning to do so as soon as I have some decent spare time).

Basically, I've drafted up a layout xml/dtd and a definition xml/dtd, where layout is the layout of the menu (the menu layouts of each of the des, including dirs and subdirs) and the definition is the definition of which packages go where in the menu, done in a similar way to packages.mask (eg >=mozilla-1.3 to match mozilla 1.3 and above), and these will exist in /usr/portage/profile, and be optionally overridden by something in the users home dir.

My next step is to write some basic python that inspects the world file, and generates the corresponding menus for each de and user according to what's installed.

The advantages to this approach are 1) it's highly flexible, 2) it requires absolutely no changes to portage/ebuilds, 3) it's fairly simple, architecture-wise and 4) the xml is easy enough to edit manually so you don't have to be a genius to modify your menus. For 95% of users the default menus, defined by the gentoo dev team, will probably be good enough.
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 08, 2003 12:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wouldn't that be the same like the desktop menu specification in the freedesktop standard? So why don't just use that?
http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu/draft/menu-spec/menu-spec.html#MENU-FILE-FORMAT
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 08, 2003 3:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ooo er... I'll just have to eat a bit of humble pie on that one. Thanks for the link Heino.

I'll read up on it tonight. I'm trying to set aside some free time to get this done.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 30, 2003 7:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are people saying this should be done on the kde and gnome level and not on the distro level? I think this is a pressing issue as well icon location.

In the meantime I think we should just do
Code:
pkg_postinst() {
   use kde && cp gaim.desktop {$ROOT}/usr/kde/$kdev/share/applnk/Internet
   use kde && cp icons {$ROOT}/usr/kde/$kdev/share/icons/default.kde
}
It would b a good stopgap at least for major apps.undefined
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 12:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

noff wrote:
Are people saying this should be done on the kde and gnome level and not on the distro level?


Yes they were, and I think this is wrong. Given how differently distributions work, I think it's really the position of the distro to be deducing what should be included in the application menu.

I'm reviving this thread because I just spotted Menu2WM, a nifty little application for generating WMs for most common WM menus from an XML source file.
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 1:53 am    Post subject: Re: Menus Reply with quote

charlieg wrote:
seemant wrote:
Alastair Tse (liquidx) pointed out that GNOME and KDE are already confroming to the freedesktop.org standards.

As nice as it is to adhere to the freedesktop.org standards, it's always nice to have it customisable, especially so with a menu.

You might even want a different menu layout according to whatever DE you are using... or even whatever user you are logged in as.


I suppose I'm suffering from a lack of sleep, so maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying here. I would think the point of an automated menu generation system would be to have a consistent menu structure; custom menu structures could always be left as an exercise of the reader. Aren't flexible, per-DE per-login-session menus what we have in most WMs now? :wink:
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 2:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The fdo spec provides for per-user, per-WM/DE customisation of menus (adding, moving, removing and rearranging items and folders). I really don't see the point of trying to reinvent the wheel when the fdo solution does what's needed.
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 10:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ecatmur wrote:
The fdo spec provides for per-user, per-WM/DE customisation of menus (adding, moving, removing and rearranging items and folders). I really don't see the point of trying to reinvent the wheel when the fdo solution does what's needed.


+1

My comments were made a long time ago, before fdo was in full swing.
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