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GLEP: 16
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Title: Gentoo Menu System
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Version: $Revision: 1.4 $
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Last-Modified: $Date: 2004/05/04 17:52:27 $
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Author: Heinrich Wendel <lanius@gentoo.org>,
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Status: Draft
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Type: Standards Track
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Content-Type: text/x-rst
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Created: 09-Sep-2003
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Post-History: 04-Oct-2003, 11-Dec-2003, 13-Dec-2003, 4-May-2004
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Definitions
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============
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*APP*
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A graphical application that should be listed in the menus.
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*WM*
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A program containing a menu manager (i.e. a program that can display a menu, e.g. a windowmanager).
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Abstract
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========
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This GLEP handles a proposal for the following two goals:
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* Create a common menu layout, which would be independent of the WM.
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This point is quite important for those people who use more than one WM.
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* Provide a common way to add applications to the menus.
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Motivation
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==========
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GNOME, KDE, Fluxbox, to name only a few, have all their own ways of handling
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menus. There have been several requests [1]_ [2]_ [3]_ [4]_ [5]_ [6]_ from
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users to streamline these menus. Furthermore there are several bug reports
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about applications not having a menu entry [7]_, but since there is not
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standard way to create such an entry, they are just sitting around in
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bugzilla.
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Rationale
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=========
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The idea of a common menu system is not new to the Linux world, every big
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distribution (Debian, Mandrake, RedHat, Suse) has such a system. The big DE's,
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KDE and GNOME, with the help of freedesktop.org [8]_, are also trying to
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implement one standard. That will most likely happen in GNOME 2.6 and KDE 3.2
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(Currently they are only implementing different versions of the
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desktop-entry-spec, but interpreting it in an incompatible way). But there
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are still many other WM's that currently don't support these specs. So we are
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trying to base our work on the specifications GNOME and KDE are going to use.
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(These are no official standards but evolving specifications). This has the
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following advantages:
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* follow specified standards
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* i18n support
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* provide the necessary flexibility and modularity
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* integrate with small changes to our ebuildtree.
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* support for per system and per user menus
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Specification
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=============
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We are trying to follow these specifications:
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* Desktop Entry Specification [9]_
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* Menu Specification [10]_
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* Icon Theme Specification [11]_
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There are two libraries that offer an API to these specifications:
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* PyXDG [12]_ (written in python)
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* Desktop File Utils [13]_ (written in C)
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Our goal is to patch the WM's with the help of these libraries to support the
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specifications. APP's then only have to install a .desktop entry [9]_ and
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optionally an icon and will be listed in all menus. This installation could
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easily be done by two portage commands (domenu, doicon).
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Implementation / Status
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=======================
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This GLEP exists for a long time now, still it is not accepted. I will outline
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the current status:
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* KDE 3.2 (x86) supports this specification
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* GNOME 2.6 (~x86) support this specification
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* domenu[12_] has to be included in portage to be used by the ebuilds to
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install a desktop entry
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* Somebody needs to write patches for the other WM's:
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We should focus on adding support to the following WM's first:
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* xfce, blackblox / fluxbox / openbox / waimea / kahakai, icewm
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* fvwm, windowmaker, enlightment, afterstep
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The following are not so important, but support some kind of applications
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menu:
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* aewm / aewm++ / evilwm / windowlab / oroborus, amiwm, ctwm, flwm
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* golem, larswm, pekwm, plwm, pwm, qvwm, selectwm, treewm, trwm
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* vtwm, xpde
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Credits
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=======
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Based on suggestions from former discussions on the gentoo bugzilla,
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mailinglists and forums.
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References
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==========
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.. [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5510
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.. [2] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10429
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.. [3] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4884
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.. [4] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25797
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.. [5] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=66754
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.. [6] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=263106#263106
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.. [7] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25756
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.. [8] http://www.freedesktop.org
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.. [9] Desktop Entry Specification
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[http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-entry-spec/0.9.4/]
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.. [10] Menu Specification
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[http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/0.8/]
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.. [11] Icon Theme Specification
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[http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/icon-theme-spec/0.7/]
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.. [12] PyXDG
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[http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pyxdg]
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.. [13] Desktop File Utils
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[http://www.freedesktop.org/software/desktop-file-utils]
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.. [14] domenu
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[http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25756]
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Copyright
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=========
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This document has been placed in the public domain.
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