Item in Applications that does not appear in Menu Editor

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-04-23 00:32:34

Xubuntu 13.10, x86_64, all up to date.

This is very weird. I have an application in my Applications menu that will not launch. To troubleshoot I decided to check the actual launch command in Settings Manager > Main Menu, but the application does not appear. So I decided to recreate the launch item, which went fine, but after doing so the newly created launch item does not appear in the Main Menu editor either. If I navigate to the executable and double-click on it in Thunar the application launches fine.

I am perplexed. Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here?

ozjd · 2014-04-23 02:26:19

Try running it from a terminal. It should give some errors which will help you looking for an answer.

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-04-23 02:49:54

ozjd wrote:

Try running it from a terminal. It should give some errors which will help you looking for an answer.

As I mentioned previously, it runs fine from the terminal and by double-clicking on the executable in Thunar, no errors. The problem is not getting the program to run; the problem is with the menu editor. Something is wrong with the command in the menu entry, but I cannot edit the menu entry to fix the command because it does not appear in Alacarte. When I create a new menu item for the program in Alacarte, that menu item also fails to appear in Alacarte. That is the weird part. Why do these menu items not appear in Alacarte?

Last edited by John_Jason_Jordan (2014-04-23 02:50:56)

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-04-23 03:01:16

I also just now installed menulibre, and the menu entry does not appear in menulibre either. I can recreate it in menulibre, but afterwards it still does not appear in menulibre. And menulibre crashed when I tried to close it.

ozjd · 2014-04-23 03:58:05

You didn't say which menu editor you were using first, there are many editors people try to use with Xfce but as you discovered few if any work well. The only way to reliably edit the menu is manually, see https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu. It mentions Lxmed too which may work for you.

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-04-23 06:42:30

ozjd wrote:

You didn't say which menu editor you were using first, there are many editors people try to use with Xfce but as you discovered few if any work well. The only way to reliably edit the menu is manually, see https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu. It mentions Lxmed too which may work for you.

I'm sorry I did not specify Alacarte. I said I went to Settings Manager > Main Menu and I assumed that people knew that the actual application that is called up there is Alacarte.

Thanks for the link, but it did not really help. The program that started this thread does not have a desktop file in ~/local/share/applications, so no way to edit it manually. Of course, that may be why Alacarte does not display it.

As for lxmed, I already had lxmed installed, but when I went to launch it from the menu nothing happened. I had to launch it from the terminal by navigating to the folder where the .jar file was located and giving the command "java -jar LXMenuEditor.jar." Once lxmed came up I noticed that the command to launch lxmed was just "lxmed," not the java command. I changed it to the same command and folder that worked from the command line, but it still won't launch from the applications menu. The error message is "Failed to execute command "/home/jjj/Software/LX_Menu_Editor/content/java -jar LXMenuEditor.jar." And yes, it does have a desktop file, and the file properly reflects the java command. So now I have two programs that won't launch from the menu.

But the first program that started this thread does appear in lxmed. Unfortunately, in the lxmed properties window all the options are grayed out and cannot be edited. And, as noted, there is no desktop file for it.

I realize that menu editing has been messed up on Linux for many years, but that doesn't make me feel any better about not being able to edit my menus.

Last edited by John_Jason_Jordan (2014-04-23 06:50:17)

ozjd · 2014-04-23 06:52:17

Actually desktop files for system applications are in /usr/share/applications/ but should be copied to ~/local/share/applications/ before they are edited.

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#1 2014-04-23 00:32:34

Item in Applications that does not appear in Menu Editor

#2 2014-04-23 02:26:19

Re: Item in Applications that does not appear in Menu Editor

#3 2014-04-23 02:49:54

Re: Item in Applications that does not appear in Menu Editor

#4 2014-04-23 03:01:16

Re: Item in Applications that does not appear in Menu Editor

#5 2014-04-23 03:58:05

Re: Item in Applications that does not appear in Menu Editor

#6 2014-04-23 06:42:30

Re: Item in Applications that does not appear in Menu Editor

#7 2014-04-23 06:52:17

Re: Item in Applications that does not appear in Menu Editor

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