Re: fmenu

On Jan 4, mibus wrote:
> my point is that mapping an existing (potentially large) menu into a
> PDA app launcher doesn't always work so well. It could get worse as
> more storage becomes availabe on PDAs, if you're running debian have a
> look at /usr/lib/menu/!
...
> Or, maybe a better idea - use "gpe=yes" or a more generic form of
> it to say "hey, I'd work on a PDA and not be a pain"? That to me
> sounds good. It would both fit in the current /usr/lib/menu scheme
> *and* allow for the seperation of PDA/non- PDA packages.

Having fmenu key off of a particular tag in /usr/lib/menu as you
mention here is surely the right thing to do. It should really solve
almost all of your concerns as expressed above.

A first cut might be to simply ignore any entry that does not provide
an icon. This is very general, and fmenu can really only look good
with menu entries that have icons.

The fact that some packages like rxvt bury their menu entries very
deep can easily be fixed. If it makes sense to revamp the menu policy
in general for Familiar, (it has been pretty much adhoc so far), feel
free to propose something to the Familiar mailing list.

> Of course, there'd be an extra performance hit involved for parsing
> the extra non-PDA ones but it probably wouldn't be noticable.

No hit at all. Remember that at update-menus time, the
/etc/menu-methods/fmenu template can filter out the entries that fmenu
doesn't care about. So, when fmenu actually runs, it will never see
them. But, yes, this never would have been significant anyway.

> What would have to be changed? update-menus would presumably have to
> be re-run with a list of menu directories? It would be even better
> that way as gtk-menu etc. would also benefit from extra programs.

Yes, we would need a master list somewhere of directories into which
packages could be installed. This list would be useful for several
things:

        configuring destination paths for ipkg
        setting up /etc/ld.so.conf
        setting PATH properly
        generating menu entries

> Ditto. Note that I'm not trying to argue the point, more make sure
> that we get it right the first time :)

Sounds good to me. I think we're getting closer. :)

What do you think?

-Carl

-- 
Carl Worth                                        
USC Information Sciences Institute                 cworth@east.isi.edu
3811 N. Fairfax Dr. #200, Arlington VA 22203		  703-812-3725