Xfce Forum

ddwmusic

Member

Registered: 2017-07-23

Posts: 28

Menus got trashed again

Today I tried to create a launcher for the Carla app, and 70% of the menu items disappeared.

In the past, I had asked about this and the advice was to delete the ~/.config/menus folder and recreate custom launchers. That had worked in the past.

Today, however, deleting the folder restored the system-level menu items (OK), but recreating even one (only one) custom launcher again destroyed the menus.

So at present, I can have the system-level launchers or custom ones, but not both at once.

When I create a custom launcher, there's a large XML file that gets created under ~/.config/menus. I believe this is incomplete for some reason.

Some time ago, the Menu Editor started reporting parse errors in several .desktop files. (Some of these now show no name or location, so it's impossible to fix them manually.) Could this cause an exception in the process of building the XML file? If so, why would the exception be fatal and end up messing everything up?

This is a very high frustration point for me. Totally not acceptable if, for certain apps, I have to navigate by hand to the folder. Such a waste of time. That's what the menu is for!

What is the next step? I'm thinking, destroy this user account and create a new one. I don't know what else to do.

hjh

CwF

Member

Registered: 2018-01-28

Posts: 289

Re: Menus got trashed again

You don't say how you're doing things. I've had menulibre trash the top level functionality, and had issue with the xml complexity...like here https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=12555.

However I don't have issues when I don't use any 'menu editors' and as a parallel method my focus.menu doesn't clobber anything.

The term launcher is confusing, what are you changing? To me a 'launcher' is a custom function from the panel, not involving the menu's - entirely independent. I have many 'launchers' in my panels that do not appear any where else,, nor do I want them to.

When I create a '.desktop' file and place it in ~/.local/share/applications they are included in the menu without anything further. I don't edit any thing else, simply place the desktop file, I don't edit the menu directly, allowing it's auto magical generation. I recently added a more configured 'feh' and mpv-image-viewer desktop files and they populated the menu without issue even though they do nothing from the menu - so why be there? Those are used strictly from file association.

Actually I work from primarily file association using thunar as the 'menu'. Old school file manager based. Rarely do I start a program from the menu. Most of my panel based launchers are not in any menu do non-gui things for virtual machines. A few things are selectable from the 'notification area' , these need to be things that behave correctly in that area, and are autostart capable - this alleviates the need for a menu for those item.

Then I eliminate redundant things like 'action buttons'. So that menu 'top Level' better be there so I have a way to log out!

Overall, lot-O-ways to skin the mouse. Work around things that don't work right and you may find you don't need them to work at all! I suspect people using heavily modified menu's and using the two 'optional' menu editors - need to use them often. I worked around it, now don't need one at all. Actually, I pulled menulibre from all my images a year ago for non-use.

ddwmusic

Member

Registered: 2017-07-23

Posts: 28

Re: Menus got trashed again

I'm using the "Menu Editor" (menulibre). In here, when you click the "+" button, there are options for Add Launcher, Add Directory and Add Separator.

So perhaps I should create some .desktop files by hand?

Or delete menulibre from my system and use a different GUI helper?

hjh