What is 'Main Menu' item on Accessories ? [SOLVED]

[ron_h]

LMDE 201403 Cinnamon 64bit

I am familiar with 'Menu' - icon is in bottom LH corner of screen, and am aware it can be configured by right mouse button and a click. Please don't shoot me, to me it's much like the Start Menu in Windows.

Can someone please explain what the 'Main Menu' item, in 'Accessories' in this Menu, is ? And what it is used for ? Its contents certainly don't correspond to what is in 'Menu'. What is the effect of changing things in 'Main Menu' - that is will it have any effect on things in 'Menu'. Do I actually need 'Main Menu' at all - that is can I configure the 'Menu' by deleting it ?

Ron

[karlchen]

Hello, Ron.

None of my systems offers a menu item or submenu named "Main Menu" in the "Accessories" submenu.
Yet, you can use the menu editor itself and check the properties of the object in question. The menu editor should be able to tell you what "Main Menu" inside the "Accessories" submenu is.

Kind regards,
Karl

[ron_h]

When I look at the Accessories- Main Menu (A-MM) item using the right mouse button-configure-edit menu (RMB-ME), it tells me the command to be executed is 'alacarte'. The menu to be edited from a menu editor has much the same look-and-feel whether I use RMB-ME or A-MM, so I would suspect that alacarte is being executed in both cases, but I don't see any way to identify the command being used in RMB-ME to confirm this.

What I can say is the *data* being displayed by menu editor (alacarte ?) for menus and items within menus is not the same for the 2 cases. The A-MM menu has more menus than the RMB-ME menu and some A-MM menus contain more items than the equivalent menu in RMB-ME Examples : within the Games menu, A-MM has 11 items, with the show item button checked, which just aren't there at all in RMB-ME. A-MM has a Science menu, which has an item LibreOffice Math, with the show item button checked, while RMB-ME has no Science menu at all. The menu that actually displays when the menu icon bottom LH corner is clicked is the RMB-ME menu, no sign of the extra menus and items from A-MM.

So, what is this A-MM Main Menu ? Is it useful in any way ? Would it be OK to just delete it ?

Ron

PS I think the alacarte package was installed as part of the LMDE, but I don't think I installed it. I don't know how to determine whether a package was installed as part of LMDE or at a later date, is there any way to find out ? maybe using Synaptic Package Manager ?

[karlchen]

Hi, ron_h.

It should have occurred to me that the item labelled "Main Menu" was in fact "Main Menu Editor", good old alacarte. - In the past alacarte was the menu editor, in particular on Gnome2 desktops.
You might check whether alacarte is not in fact the programme which is launched when you right click on the [Menu] button => Configure => Open Menu Editor.
While you are inspecting the Mint menu open a terminal window and run

Code: Select all

ps axu | grep -v "grep" | grep "alacarte"

In case this returns a line displaying the alacarte process, then alacarte is the LMDE Mint menu editor.
In this case you would have two ways of launching the Mint menu editor:
(1) [Menu] => Accessories => Main Menu
(2) Right click on the [Menu] button => Configure => Open Menu Editor

Here on my Ubuntu based Linux Mint 13 the menu editor is an alacarte fork, named cinnamon-menu-editor.

Kind regards,
Karl

[ron_h]

Hi Karl

Issuing that command in a terminal after starting the menu editor resulted in no output at all, just a new prompt, so RMB-ME is not using alacarte. I started Menu-Administration-System Monitor and it shows an interesting Process called cinnamon-menu-e - maybe this represents another fork from alacarte ? And if I close the menu editor, cinnamon-menu-e disappears from the list of processes.

cinnamon-menu-editor is NOT in the list of packages displayed by Synaptic Package Manager on my system, either installed or available to install. If I search on cinnamon-menu-e there is no such package, the only package selected is one called nemo-fileroller. BTW, the only package that shows as installed when I do a search on 'menu editor' is alacarte.

I don't really have 2 ways to invoke the menu editor since the 2 options are using different data/control files as shown by the menu contents. See above. The only menu editor that actually changes the Menu in use is RMB-ME aka cinnamon-menu-e

I'm beginning to think I may have installed alacarte myself and thereby shot myself in the foot when (soon after I installed LMDE) I was trying to work out how to edit the Menu. Unfortunately although I've always advised people I've tried to help over the years (*) that they must document all they do, I don't always take my own advice

Ron

(*) that is with Windows etc, not with Linux in any shape or form

[karlchen]

Hello, ron_h.

In short words:
Your Cinnamon uses cinnamon-menu-editor just like mine. Alacarte is not needed. So you might as well disable it in the Accessories menu.
cinnamon-menu-editor is not a separate software package. It is a component in one of the cinnamon software packages.
Sorry, cannot look up which one right now, because I am logged in to Linux Mint 13 xfce with the Whisker Menu.

Cheers,
Karl

[ron_h]

Hi Karl

I have removed alacarte, this in turn has removed the menu item Main Menu for me.

Many thanks

Ron