Menu icons do not appear

John_Jason_Jordan · 2016-01-28 19:25:41

A couple days ago I did a dist-upgrade from Xubuntu 12.04 to 14.04.3. I'm still fixing broken stuff, but getting close to finished.

The worst problem is what the upgrade did to the menus. Whole new menus were created that I do not want, and other menus were deleted. Using mostly the Main Menu option in Settings Manager (which apparently calls Alacarte) I've managed fix most of it. I created a new menu Multimedia, as I had before, and manually added the entries for the programs that I use. I can use the items to launch the applications, but none of the icons appear. In Alacarte I can add the icon and it appears in the Properties window, but when I close Alacarte the icon does not appear in the actual menu. This happens only to the icons in my Multimedia folder; application icons appear properly in all the other menus.

<RantMode:On>A related issue is a long-standing gripe - why are the menu icons scattered from hell to breakfast? Has it never occurred to anyone to corral all menu icons in the same folder? I have to use Catfish to find the icon I want. Grr. <RantMode:Off>

sixsixfive · 2016-01-28 20:19:17

probably your distribution changed it for future GTK3 updates! Xfce GTK3/4 apps will not feature menu icons see: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12214

Last edited by sixsixfive (2016-01-28 20:26:41)

ToZ · 2016-01-28 21:03:18

I don't think the menuing system would be affected by GTK3 - its still GTK2. And Xubuntu 14.04 is a couple of years old still. If its only the icons in the Multimedia folder that are not showing up, it might be a refresh issue. Try restarting the panel "xfce4-panel -r" or logging out and in again. You also have the option of using the Whisker Menu - which has a more modern feel to it.

The reason why the icons are scattered is because Xfce follows freedesktop standards - and in this case the icon naming specification. And each icon theme will have its own directory structure.

sixsixfive · 2016-01-28 21:23:20

>I don't think the menuing system would be affected by GTK3 - its still GTK2

but maybe his distro disabled them to get a more unified desktop

>And each icon theme will have its own directory structure.

since they following: http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-t … atest.html

Last edited by sixsixfive (2016-01-28 21:25:47)

John_Jason_Jordan · 2016-01-29 05:29:40

Thanks for the suggestions.

First, 'xfce4-panel -r' and logging in and out changed nothing.

Second, I followed the link to freedesktop.org, but found most of it confusing and not very helpful.

As for the Whisker menu, it appears to be installed, but I'll be darned if I can figure our how to launch it. From the command line I did 'apropos whisker' and it suggested 'xfce4-popup-whiskermenu,' but when I enter the command it executes without error, yet nothing happens. But from reading about it I surmise that it shuffles menu items so the most recent is on top or something. I want things that stay where I put them, so I doubt I'd like it.

Going back to working on the problem on my own I decided to try "Menu Editor" in the Settings Manager instead of "Main Menu." This launches MenuLibre, where the latter launches Alacarte. Until now Alacarte is all that I had tried. But then the weirdness started. MenuLibre seemed to work better until I suddenly noticed that half the items I had previously added to the Accessories menu had disappeared. Furthermore, the list of apps in my Multimedia folder no longer appeared in the menu - none of them - although they all appeared in MenuLibre. But I forged on. Using MenuLibre I added icons to all the 26 items in my Multimedia folder, which took nearly two hours because of the time it took to search the entire filesystem for them. As I added and saved each one the item reappeared in the launch menu, although sans the icon. When I finished I used 'xfce4-panel -r' and all the icons then appeared.

At this point I thought I was close to finished, but I suddenly noticed in MenuLibre that there were two folders labeled Video Production (that did not appear in Alacarte) as well as my new Multimedia menu. One was empty, and the other had all the apps that I had just laboriously added to my new Multimedia menu! Alacarte had not allowed me to rename a menu, but in MenuLibre I could, so I renamed it Multimedia, then marked my new Multimedia to hide it from the launch menu. The result of this was that I now have no Multimedia menu at all in the launch menu. Refreshing the panel had no effect. And now, whether I mark both to appear, neither to appear, one to appear or the other to appear, neither ever appears. And I'm still missing half the menu items from my Accessories menu, including the Settings Manager.

And, while I now have four or five hours invested in trying to get my menus working, the last time I did a fresh install it took four days to get the system working the way I needed it. Otherwise at this point I would give up on this mess and reinstall.

It is now 9:30 pm. I'm going to get a beer, watch a movie, and go to bed. Perhaps in the morning my mood will have improved.

ToZ · 2016-01-29 11:52:01

As for the Whisker menu, it appears to be installed, but I'll be darned if I can figure our how to launch it. From the command line I did 'apropos whisker' and it suggested 'xfce4-popup-whiskermenu,' but when I enter the command it executes without error, yet nothing happens. But from reading about it I surmise that it shuffles menu items so the most recent is on top or something. I want things that stay where I put them, so I doubt I'd like it.

The Whisker Menu a panel plugin. Add it to the panel by right-clicking the panel and selecting Panel > Add New Items... Although it does offer the ability to have a Favourites, Recently Used and All categories, it still also displays the regular menu categories and contents. It won't solve your current menu problems, its just an alternative menu application for Xfce.

Any changes that the menu editors make are saved to the ~/.config/menus and ~/.local/share/desktop-directories directory. If you want to try a fresh start, rename those directories:

mv ~/.config/menus ~/.config/menus.backup
mv ~/.local/share/desktop-directories ~/.local/share/desktop-directories.backup

...and you should get back your distro default menu structure.
(And since you've renamed them, all you have to do is rename them back and you will return to the configurations you currently have).

John_Jason_Jordan · 2016-01-29 19:29:51

ToZ wrote:

The Whisker Menu a panel plugin. Add it to the panel by right-clicking the panel and selecting Panel > Add New Items... Although it does offer the ability to have a Favourites, Recently Used and All categories, it still also displays the regular menu categories and contents. It won't solve your current menu problems, its just an alternative menu application for Xfce.
Any changes that the menu editors make are saved to the ~/.config/menus and ~/.local/share/desktop-directories directory. If you want to try a fresh start, rename those directories.
...and you should get back your distro default menu structure.
(And since you've renamed them, all you have to do is rename them back and you will return to the configurations you currently have).

Wow! I knew going to bed was a good idea. Not because my own brain came up with anything, but because this morning here is a message that really helps. Indeed, after renaming the directories and 'xfce4-panel -r' the menus are back to what they were before I started editing them. Now I can try a fresh start. And this time I'm going to use just one of the two menu editors exclusively, because I have a suspicion that at least part of the mess was caused by going back and forth between Alacarte and MenuLibre.

As for the Whisker menu, thanks also for the information. I added it to the panel, and it looks like it might be a possibility, but for now I'm just going to try to use the regular menu.

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#1 2016-01-28 19:25:41

Menu icons do not appear

#2 2016-01-28 20:19:17

Re: Menu icons do not appear

#3 2016-01-28 21:03:18

Re: Menu icons do not appear

#4 2016-01-28 21:23:20

Re: Menu icons do not appear

#5 2016-01-29 05:29:40

Re: Menu icons do not appear

#6 2016-01-29 11:52:01

Re: Menu icons do not appear

#7 2016-01-29 19:29:51

Re: Menu icons do not appear

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