(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Looks like a good effort to get a GTK editor. I'd encourage wider panel support, especially for GTK environments.

A quick google only unearthed:
1. Arch's xdg-menu, perl-based, supports

twm
ion3
WindowMaker
fvwm2
icewm
blackbox
fluxbox
openbox
awesome

from XDG stuff. KDE, Gnome, Xfce, Enlightenment are already XDG compatible.

2. LXMenuEditor, java-based, supports LXDE and XFCE

Thanks Mobeus - this thread is helping answer questions I have as a result of trying to tidy up menus in an XFCE environment, which appears to be xdg compliant. Does your program handle xfce also? (most of the googling I have done refers to lxmenueditor and requiring java, which I don't want).

Hi greengeek,
Glad you find it useful. Xfce is xdg compliant, but the spec itself is flexible and different desktops will interpret the menu files in somewhat different ways, and some do not support some important, but optional, features.

My program and menus should work with xfce, because everything I’m doing is xdg compliant. I haven’t tested xfce yet but I don’t expect any major problems (famous last words). I’ve looked at LXMenuEditor and it has the same shortcomings as most other ones I’ve tried; a hard coded root menu. It is not xdg compliant.

Let me say it one more time
This package will implement freedesktop.org xdg menus for Puppy in a way that any xdg compliant window manager and or panel will be able to use without modification. In addition to that it will work for the window managers and panels that the official woof-built Puppy supports at this time, and it will work with Puppy’s fixmenu script, and it will allow full menu customization.

Regards,
Mobeus

Mobeus wrote:Anyway, I just wanted to toss this out here and see if there is any community interest in it.

Yes there is.
I'd like to trial it yesterday please.

greengeek wrote: I'd like to trial it yesterday please.

Well, the menu infrastructure and the menu generator are almost ready for trials, but the editor is on hold until the infrastructure is deemed complete.

I would like a few volunteers to try just the menu using clean frugal installs on some different Puppys with different window managers and panels. That would be a good start to uncover the inevitable issues that will pop up. There’s some more testing to be done here and then I’ll put together a package with some documentation. One issue yet to be addressed is the XDG_MENU_PREFIX environment variable which Puppy does not supply, and many desktop environments rely on.

Mobeus wrote:I would like a few volunteers to try just the menu using clean frugal installs on some different Puppys with different window managers and panels.

Hi Mobeus,

I run Micko's Compiz sfs with pcmanfm/lxpanel to manage desktop and menu (what he calls "xwin dummy2"), so it won't be testing from a pristine frugal install. The pristine frugal install would be a Slacko 5.5 and Slacko 5.3 which I still have on the computer.
Let me know.

Regards,
gulk

greengeek wrote:I'd like to trial it yesterday please.

yes... watching on with interest.

01micko wrote:yes... watching on with interest.

+1. Fatdog has openbox/lxpanel (with menu-cached) as default, and rather old version of JWM as backup.

Progress:

Support for fbpanel is finished.

Working on Fluxbox support.

.

Hi simargl,

I’ll address this in a somewhat reverse order... and forgive me for covering ground you already know, please.

The purpose of fixmenus is to auto-update the menus for certain window managers after installing a pet and at boot. Maybe at the start of X too, not sure about that. You should not have to type fixmenus unless you manually install a package or manually make a menu change.

If the latest fixmenus does not update fluxbox it is because it calls jwm2fluxbox to create the menu, and as far as I can determine this script no longer exists. It looks as if the script in use today is fluxbox_menu_refresh. It is this script and it’s supporting files that determine the menu layout of fluxbox in Puppy.

In order for everything to work with Puppy, the xdg *.menu and menu-generator part of my project is designed to work with fixmenus and it’s associated scripts. The menu it generates is a translation (with icons) of the complete xdg menu that gnome-menus generates from the correct [XDG_MENU_PREFIX]-applications.menu used by the current user’s window manager. This output is delivered to the scripts like fluxbox_menu_refresh and they assemble the menu, just as they do now.

Regards,
Mobeus

PS still trying to get my radeon working with AlphaOS

Progress:

Fluxbox support completed.

Time in seconds to generate the various menus:
All menus include icons.

.

Hi simargl,

Thanks, I’ll try that with /etc/rc.conf & let you know on your thread.

I would suggest to add all needed supporting scripts from original
Puppy to your package so it is like all-in-one and become more Linux general than Puppy specific project.

Other Linux OS do not need this package. The package in this thread is all about making the Puppy menu system more standards compliant, like Linux in general, and do so in a way that will not break the existing support system that is in place for these other window managers, including the icon theme switcher and PPM. It is a very small modification to Puppy, yet will allow good things that are difficult with the current setup.

Then I will build the menu editor in a way that will work for most Linux that use the freedesktop.org standard, including Puppy, and yet not be Puppy specific.

Great thing about openbox is ability to use
pipe menus, so applications list can be automatically generated every time

You mean like openbox-menu? I think my menu generator will work the same way. I’ll have to try it. Regards

Progress:

Improved fluxbox menu generation.

Version 1 time Version 2 time Much better. I can live with that.

Hello All,

The proposal and implementation for the menu system is in it's own thread here

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 412#699412
.

Mobeus wrote:Here is a taste of the project that I have been working on. The subject of the Puppy menu system came up again in the AlphaOS thread today, so I thought I would post this.

Here is a screen shot from my slacko 5.5. Notice anything? Is anyone curious?

Mobeus - I am very interested in your menu re-work. I am not a programmer so I would need instructions. As long as the adaptation wouldn't break my currently working Precise Puppy LTS 5.6.1 I would really like to use your menu.

My problem with the current menu: I have installed applications from PPM, but where do I find them and how do I start them if they are gui based applications? They are not in the menu on my puppy desktop.

Your menu would be a better adaptation for friends PC's too. I have been finding converts that have older hardware and/or older software and don't want to or can't afford to upgrade their hardware or software with Redmond OS compatibility. The applications that I have installed on their PC's don't show in the current menu, so I haven't mentioned to anyone that they are installed. I was hoping to find a solution so they will have a way to access those applications.

* I know this is old post... I just came across it, so I hope that you are still monitoring it and working on your project.

Hi Mobeus,
I have just started a thread on what I would hope to see as the future development of the Puppy user environment. I am being a bit bold as a relatively unskilled user doing that, to be sure. However as an unsophisticated user, I may be able to help in letting developers see what the great unwashed customer base may need. Anyway, I am throwing out my ideas to see if we can get a constructive dialogue between users and developers in this area.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 666#719666

You will see that I am asking for a lot of customisability and that a heck of a lot of that concerns the menu system. Although my proposal is even more radical than yours, there are common features, so you are well on the way to meeting many of my proposals already. The difference is that you have the skills to implement them, I don't. I hope that my ideas may stimulate you and would also appreciate your thoughts on them, if you have time.

Obviously, your current targets are well worth meeting first. Where I am suggesting going beyond what little I understand of your target is mainly:

i) Much more aggressive use of desktop space, allowing less cluttered display of menu panels and larger text and icons.
ii) A background "minder" that keeps track of user, and Puplet developer modification to a standard woof menu and decktop structure.

Hope that this is of interest.