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charlieg
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 11:58 am    Post subject: Syncing WM menus with Portage Reply with quote

This is fairly important given that currently most wms start with their own default menus and need manually updating.

Obviously some packages want to go into the menu (eg gimp), and some don't (eg glibc).

Ways to handle menu generation:

1) Port the debian menu solution. Have menu generation part of the ebuild scripts. Packages flag that they want to be in the menu by putting a file into eg /usr/share/menu and have portage regenerate the menu file upon completion of the emerge.

2) (My choice) Have portage intelligently estimate which packages should go into the menu by what /usr/portage directory the ebuild is in. Any eg /*lib/ packages won't go in the menu but eg /*app/ packages would. This would also provide a method for submenus to be generated, reflecting the portage directory structure although with nicer names.
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pjp
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 12:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Seems like alot of work for the developers. How can an ebuild 'know' what every WM likes for menu entries?
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 12:50 pm    Post subject: Well Reply with quote

I would have thought the point would be to encourage / force the wms to all use the same menu or something along those lines. Perhaps I'm (very) wrong though.
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pjp
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 1:22 pm    Post subject: Re: Well Reply with quote

Would be nice if they could, but I'm guessing that won't happen. I'm sure someone could come up with a 'good' reason not to. Perhaps some have limitations that others don't and vice versa. As soon as there was a 'standard', I'm sure we'd see new WMs that didn't follow it.
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supenguin
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 4:25 pm    Post subject: one menu, many window managers Reply with quote

I like the idea of having one menu that all the window managers read from. The problem is, you either need to have a standard format (yet another standard to break, as another poster indicated). Also, if you don't like the way its setup and want to customize it, would your changes get overwritten next time you update your packages? My opinion, a better solution would be to write a script or program that would intelligently generate a menu from the programs installed by portage. Then, have another script that could convert between the different wm menu formats. These scripts would be an optional add-on package. This way, the one menu thing is optional. Its take it or leave it. Its not crammed down users' throats by forcing its way into the base system.
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charlieg
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 10:02 am    Post subject: Some points Reply with quote

How obvious it is that this world has suffered from bad UIs / OSes for so long... you're all assuming the worst!

supenguin
Quote:
Its not [to be] crammed down users' throats by forcing its way into the base system.
Definitely no cramming to be done. One of the main attractions of Gentoo is it is all about choice. Nothing is installed until you ask for it. This would include any kind of menu management.

kanuslupus
Quote:
Seems like alot of work for the developers. How can an ebuild 'know' what every WM likes for menu entries?
Wouldn't the idea to be to minimize what would go into ebuilds? At most ebuilds would suggest that they required to be in a menu and then scripts, called by portage, would take it from there. To minimize making portage complex, the scripts should work fairly independently.

There are several issues:
1) How to know which programs should be in a menu
2) Where programs should go (submenus) in the menu
3) How each WM will work with the menu
4) Customized changes to the menu must be remembered
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proxy
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 12:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

the solution i woudl use is fairly simple, have portage keep it's own menu information. information which is independant of an WM. then have a small script for each WM that could update your WM dependant menus to contain the entries in your portage menu :)

(or you could use KAppFinder)

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pjp
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 4:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

proxy wrote:
(or you could use KAppFinder)
If you use KDE. I prefer to keep KDE stuff off my machine.
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abhishek
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 5:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

proxy wrote:
the solution i woudl use is fairly simple, have portage keep it's own menu information. information which is independant of an WM. then have a small script for each WM that could update your WM dependant menus to contain the entries in your portage menu :)

(or you could use KAppFinder)

proxy

Then have it all into a submenu like Portage or soemething. Then f u want to chage the main menu u can eaisly without worrying about it getting overwritten. Also, maybe it could be toggled by a USE flag like menu.
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fghellar
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 10:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is being discussed in the gentoo-dev mailing list:
http://lists.gentoo.org/pipermail/gentoo-dev/2002-July/subject.html
Look for messages with "Automatic menus" in the subject.
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dcstimm
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 01, 2002 1:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

thats one of the biggest things I hated about Debian. Please do not change it. its perfect the way it is
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fghellar
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 01, 2002 3:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It will be an optional feature. You'll have to turn it on to start using it. If you don't turn it on, you won't even know it's there...
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pjp
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 01, 2002 4:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Considering how Gentoo works otherwise, I'm sure it would be an ebuild that wasn't required ;)
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2003 2:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Solution for automating menu generation: menu.mask
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