[TriLUG] Editing menus in Gnome 2

[Jeremy Portzer]

Good evening,

Someone asked on TriLUG's IRC channel (#trilug on irc.trilug.org) about
this, but I can't remember who.  So I figured I'd post it here in case
others are interested, too.  This is a posting from another mailing list
about editing menus in Gnome 2 (the version included in Mandrake 9 and
Red Hat 8).

From: 	Ryan Heimbuch <Ryan(at)dawson.edu>
To: 	k12osn(at)redhat.com
Subject: 	RE: [K12OSN] K12LTSP - 1 Nic
Date: 	24 Oct 2002 15:06:56 -0700

In Gnome2 the menus use the 'gnome-vfs' abstraction library and
'vFolders'. The new tech is pretty cool, but menu editing tools didn't
make it into the first release of Gnome2 or RedHat 8. 

Menus are generated by using a bunch of '.desktop' link files and
grouped according to a XML description called a 'vFolder'. There is some
documentation on how to do this in a vanilla Gnome2 install, but Red Hat
modified (hacked might be a better word) the locations of the various
vFolder and configuration files. It makes it a pain to work with,
especially if you're trying to wrap your mind around the new menu system
at the same time.

Until a GUI menu editor comes out you'll have to edit the ".desktop"
files in a text editor to add or move apps in the existing menus. To
change the actual menu structure you need to edit the appropriate
vFolder files. 

Under RH 8 the main .desktop files seem to be stored in
'/usr/share/applications'. 

The system-wide vFolders seem to be stored in
'/etc/gnome-vfs-2.0/vfolders/'

Hope that doesn't scare you too much ;)

Regards,

Ryan