Editing main menu.

[sectionq]

Hi,
I have installed Mint 14 with xfce 4.1 I believe. I'm having trouble finding a way of editing my main menu, as in removing unwanted programs from the list, not confident enough yet to physically uninstall anything as I don't know what to look for with regards to dependencies etc. Anyway, I've installed alacarte (or whatever it calls itself now) and although the gui works, I can check or uncheck programs in the list it doesn't actually have any effect on the menu itself. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Jamie

[viking777]

Unless the Mint version of Xfce is vastly different from the one I have on Manjaro, all you do is right click the menu, select properties then 'Edit Menu'.

[sectionq]

Thanks for the reply, and yes, that would be the logical thing to happen. Right click for me does exactly the same as left click, in that it simply opens whatever app I'm hovering over in the main menu. This behaviour is exclusive to the main menu, right click works as it should everywhere else (opens a properties menu etc).

[viking777]

I find it very difficult to believe that is not a faulty install, especially given that I have just booted an xfce ubuntu edition and it works exactly as I described. However there is lots of stuff on their wiki about menu editing:

https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu

So maybe it is that difficult on certain versions?

BTW Mint14 comes with Xfce4 version 4.10 not 4.1 - that is ages old.

[GeneC]

Hi,
I have installed Mint 14 with xfce 4.1 I believe. I'm having trouble finding a way of editing my main menu, as in removing unwanted programs from the list, not confident enough yet to physically uninstall anything as I don't know what to look for with regards to dependencies etc. Anyway, I've installed alacarte (or whatever it calls itself now) and although the gui works, I can check or uncheck programs in the list it doesn't actually have any effect on the menu itself. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Jamie

Jamie

Yes. editing menus has been difficult in any XFCE, but we now have a Forum member (Schoelje) who is developing an 'Unofficial LMDE-XFCE'. (Mint will no longer support LMDE-XFCE, just your Ubuntu based version).

That said, he has worked on making 'alacarte' more functional with XFCE (Its basically a Gnome app).
He has patched 'alacarte' to be more functional. I've never tried it in Mint 14 XFCe, but you may want to try.?

You can follow the conversation
Starting here.
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=118890&start=260#p671328


Download patched 'Alacarte'
http://schoelje.nl/lmdexfce/packages/al ... -1_all.deb

I would remove the old 'Alacarte' completely before installing the new.
No guarantees, but worth a try.
I'd also login/out, to see any changes take effect.

-------------------------------

If that does not work for you.
LXMED is 'somewhat' funtional with XFCE...
http://lxmed.sourceforge.net/

[DrHu]

http://linuxlibrary.org/xfce-4-desktop- ... omization/
http://xfcemenuedit.mon-asso.org/index.en.html
--manually edit the text entires in the xml configs or use some menu editor applications: your choice decides it..

[viking777]

I notice that although my Xubuntu menu can be edited with an edit menu command my Manjaro one cannot - you have to edit xml files as Dr Hu says or investigate the links given you by GeneC. As I regard xml editing as completely unacceptable I found a workround which might or might not suit you. This is what I did on Manjaro (and what gave me the wrong impression that I could edit the menu an easier way). On manjaro I moved my main menu from the far left of the panel to the far right of the panel and replaced the far left entry with a Launcher (Right click the panel > Add new item>Launcher). The launcher is VERY easily edited (which makes you wonder why you can't do it for the main menu - and why Ubuntu can? ) Anyway you just right click, select properties and you have a full gui interface to add and subtract programs with ease. I kind of use it as a 'Favourites' menu which the main menu doesn't have and that is all I use on 90% of occasions. It works well for me.

[GeneC]

....................... with a Launcher (Right click the panel > Add new item>Launcher). The launcher is VERY easily edited (which makes you wonder why you can't do it for the main menu - and why Ubuntu can? ) Anyway you just right click, select properties and you have a full gui interface to add and subtract programs with ease. I kind of use it as a 'Favourites' menu which the main menu doesn't have and that is all I use on 90% of occasions. It works well for me.

Yes, I have similar...(and it IS easily editable...)
LAUNCHER with 'Favorites'




Application Finder also works nicely as a Menu
(And it also is editable.)

[sectionq]

Wow! Thanks everyone for chipping in! A lot of things to try out, I have to say I feel a little bit pernickety asking about this. I'm still trying to find my way around things at the moment, coming from windows I'm still trying to figure out what apps I'm going to use and which I'm not, ultimately I'm a hotkeys kind of guy so the menu will eventually not be used anyway. BUT isn't it nice to keep everything neat, think of the spare room where you keep all of the junk, you never go in there but when you do it's horrible! Anyway, stuff like this is great for really getting to know a new setup.

I'm going to go straight over to check out this alacarte build to see how that works, actually the version I'm using was probably always wishful thinking anyway, gnome like you say. As for the version 4.1, sorry my mistake. You were right to point it out from a diagnostic point of view, could have been a lot of time wasted. I think my logic was that on my searching travels I seem to remember somewhere that it said alacarte worked well on version 4.4 or 4.5 so I guess that's why I missed the all important 0.
AND if all else fails the favourites bar seems a good alternative, looks a bit more 21st century too, all depends on how bells and whistles it is on this old machine! Which by the way, worth a mention, will no longer run windows and believe me I've tried everything, Linux however doesn't seem to care where it's installed and went on without any problems!

Thanks again, I'll report back as soon as I get it working one way or another. Fingers crossed I won't need to go the editing text files route, but at least I have the info if I need it.

Jamie

[sectionq]

Ok, so we've got something that works now although not initially a simple solution. The ported version of alacarte doesn't really work for me, it doesn't list all of the items that actually exist in the menu and it's still not possible to show or hide. I then tried LXMED, that works better and includes a lot more items that currently aren't in the actual main menu list (already checked as hidden) BUT it also doesn't contain some of the items that are included in alacarte. So it's weird but it looks like they are either getting their lists from either different locations or maybe each one is favouring either gnome of kde programs, not sure what but strange. Anyway, by using a combination of both programs it seems to work. You can add your own new links to LXMED so by comparing that with alacarte I can simply add in any programs that have been missed off of the LXMED list.

So basically once I've done that I can do all of my showing and hiding, copying and pasting in LXMED, a bit messy to start with but once all the menu items are there it all works as it should! Just need to get rid of alacarte now and I can start work on that spare room!

So in summary, LXMED is the winner!

Thanks again.

Jamie

[jjaythomas]

I usually have alacarte working somehow?

I think theirs a package (must be dependency of something I install on everything ) needed.

Its called libmenu and/or libxfce4menu or such (not sure ), but I have working on my debian (testing) using the 'stock' pacage in synaptic, also pretty sure had working on 'Xubuntu 11.10 or 12.04.

J.Jay