Menu Policy - please read if you maintain a package with a .desktop file in it!

Seth Nickell snickell at redhat.com
Thu May 13 22:04:32 UTC 2004


1) Don't change menu structures without asking. FYI, most of the time
the answer will be "no".

2) If your package is in any of the default package sets:
  a) You must get approval for any changes that change the menus. This
includes renaming items or adding new .desktop files. In other words,
almost any change to a .desktop file, save translations.
  b) The menu item should usually be the application's
generic/descriptive name. For example, use "Web Browser" instead of
"Mozilla" or "Mozilla Web Browser".

3) If your package is NOT in any of the default package sets:
  a) The menu name should usually be the application's given name + the
generic/descriptive name. For example, use "Mozilla Web Browser" instead
of "Web Browser" or "Mozilla".

3) The default packages in the  package sets (in the comps file) may not
include any applications that are functional duplicates. In other words,
if the user clicks all the package sets in the installer (other than
everything), they should not end up with two web browsers or two
spreadsheets in the menus. To give a hypothetical example, lets say we
shipped Gnumeric as one of the default apps in the "Office" package set.
In this case OpenOffice.org Calc should not show up in the menus, even
if the openoffice.org package is installed (presuming we install the
rest of openoffice by default). One way to address this would be to
include a separate "openoffice.org-calc" package that simply installs
a .desktop file.
  a) Exception: Although KDE and GNOME overlap we include both in
package sets. To deal with this, we mark smaller utilities and core
desktop pieces that overlap (e.g. gnome-utils, kdeutils, kdebase,
kdemultimedia, gnome-media, kdeadmin, etc) with "OnlyShowIn=...". That
way we still don't get overlapping menu items. By default all items in
these sort of packages should be marked OnlyShowIn. Ask me about
specific things you think should be exceptions.

Some general guidelines:

- Include a generic version of the name, even if your app isn't install
by default (e.g. "Mozilla Web Browser").
- Don't add menu entries for things for the heck of it. For example, the
number of people who launch emacs from the menus is probably very
small. ;-) If its mostly launched from the command line (could still be
an X application, note), don't put it in the menus.
- Don't add a bunch of entries for the same application unless its a
really big monster application (like OpenOffice.org). For example,
KBabel, a translation tool has three menu entries. It shouldn't!
- Don't have a "_____ Configuration" menu entry (e.g. Chromium
Configuration). Configuration should be launched from inside the app. If
its not, cry, but don't add it to the menus ;-)

As soon as we have a Fedora wiki, I'll put this information up there and
maintain it.

-Seth





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