Hi,

This patch goes with the one in #601139 against the devscripts package.
Please see there for the full rationale.

In short: I think it would make sense to make it so that menu entries
which originally are generated from .desktop files are (by default) not
converted back to .desktop files again; this adds little value (since
the original .desktop file contains more information, anyway). This
patch will make the menu method still generate the .desktop file, but
with an added line of 'OnlyShowIn=Debian', making sure it will not show
up by default unless overridden somewhere.

It might be better to just not generate the file at all unless the menu
method is modified, or something, but I couldn't figure out how to do
that.

While I thank you for your effort, I disagree with this proposal. The whole
purpose of the Debian menu system is to provide a consistent menu layout across
all environments. Removing some entries in some environments breaks that property,
and makes the Debian menu less useful.

Cheers,

Hi Bill,

I understand, and agree that this is a worthwhile goal. The current
state of affairs, however, is that the menu system is *not* consistent
across all environments, because the GNOME maintainers (and in the
future, perhaps the KDE maintainers too) do not show the Debian menu
system by default. Insisting on that point will not change the situation
for the better.

Note that my proposed patch does not actually disable generating the
menu entries; it merely adds an extra attribute, thereby hiding it in
desktop environments by default, but leaving open the possibility to
make them show up again.

Alternatively, one could change the patch so that rather than adding an
'OnlyShowIn' tag, the desktop entry could gain a tag something like
'X-Source: menu-desktop' (or something similar), signalling that this is
a desktop entry that was generated from a menu file generated from a
desktop entry (um. Still following? ;-).

Not showing the Debian menu at all makes it even less useful, in my
opinion; I believe that having a halfway-populated Debian menu is much
more useful than a hidden one. That's what GNOME people currently have,
and it doesn't look as if that's going to change any time soon, judging
by the opinion of the GNOME maintainers.

GNOME maintainers come and go.

Cheers,