Merging Best Features of Plank Dock and Mint Panel/Menu

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NeverGoingBack

Merging Best Features of Plank Dock and Mint Panel/Menu

Post by NeverGoingBack »

Has anyone attempted to tweak the Plank dock to behave a bit more like the Mint panel/Menu launcher combination? I installed Plank again yesterday, and it now has a docklet with a nearly full copy of the Mint menu. It is a big step in the right direction, but there are problems... The organization of the Plank "Applications" docklet does not mirror the organization of my Mint menu. Newly installed programs DO show up in the Plank docklet, but they all seem to go to the "Other" category, instead of going to the proper places. I would also like to change the icon for the docklet. It is a picture of a line graph right now, which doesn't make any sense. I would rather use the Mint icon or a custom icon.

So here is what I know...

That docklet has a configuration file SOMEWHERE telling it which icon to display.

That docklet has a configuration file SOMEWHERE telling it which menu items to display and how to organize them.

And here is what I can infer...

Changing the icon and correcting the Menu behavior should be a simple matter of just changing the values in those configuration files to reflect the desired changes.

I already located the configuration file for the Mint Menu / Panel Launcher...

Anybody have any clue where Plank stores those configurations?

Ultimately I want to end up with a Plank dock that acts as my "favorites" section combined with some elements from the "system tray" and the power/restart/suspend functions. If I can figure out some way to integrate a search function too, that would be excellent. I want to combine the advantages of both the dock and the panel, but get rid of the panel entirely.

Anyone done anything similar?

EDIT:

Is there any simple way to turn panel applets into Plank docklets?
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smurphos
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Re: Merging Best Features of Plank Dock and Mint Panel/Menu

Post by smurphos »

NeverGoingBack wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 6:35 pm So here is what I know...

That docklet has a configuration file SOMEWHERE telling it which icon to display.

That docklet has a configuration file SOMEWHERE telling it which menu items to display and how to organize them.

EDIT:

Is there any simple way to turn panel applets into Plank docklets?
Unfortunately the icon name for the Applications docklet appears to be hard-coded - https://github.com/ricotz/plank/blob/ma ... t.vala#L44

As far as I can tell for the menu organisation it's just following the categories set by the applications desktop files. I can't reproduce your issue - all the applications appear in expected categories for me. This does differ from the way the Cinnamon menu categorises some apps but that's because plank is using a Gnome menu library.

As for the last question - in general no - although it is possible to launch the main cinnamon menu from plank with a icon of your choice - see viewtopic.php?f=90&t=305437

The same cheat could be used for any applet that support launching it's menu via a keyboard shortcut.
For custom Nemo actions, useful scripts for the Cinnamon desktop, and Cinnamox themes visit my Github pages.
NeverGoingBack

Re: Merging Best Features of Plank Dock and Mint Panel/Menu

Post by NeverGoingBack »

public unowned string get_icon ()
{
return "gnome-applications;;gnome-main-menu";


Sorry, I'm not a programmer, and I'm just at the beginning stages of learning how to read code. Does the "public" imply that the program is looking in an online repository for the icon, or is that "public" in the sense of "files accessible to all the user accounts on the local machine"?

Can't I just edit that particular file from:

return "gnome-applications;;gnome-main-menu";

to:

return "mint-applets;;mint-main-menu";

Or whatever the appropriate code for the Menu icon is?
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Re: Merging Best Features of Plank Dock and Mint Panel/Menu

Post by smurphos »

Hi,

On a second look I think the relevant hard-coding is also here - https://github.com/ricotz/plank/blob/ma ... m.vala#L37 - one for the preferences menu to add it to the dock and one for the dock itself.

In theory you can download the source code, amend and compile from source. However the build instructions here don't seem to be very upto date - https://github.com/ricotz/plank/blob/master/HACKING are are silent on build dependencies.
For custom Nemo actions, useful scripts for the Cinnamon desktop, and Cinnamox themes visit my Github pages.
gm10

Re: Merging Best Features of Plank Dock and Mint Panel/Menu

Post by gm10 »

smurphos wrote: Mon Dec 16, 2019 2:52 pm In theory you can download the source code, amend and compile from source. However the build instructions here don't seem to be very upto date - https://github.com/ricotz/plank/blob/master/HACKING are are silent on build dependencies.
I don't know a thing about plank but with the rest I can help out, it's very simple for packages in the repository:
  1. Have source code packages enabled in Software Sources, then
  2. Code: Select all

    apt source plank
  3. Code: Select all

    cd plank-whatever.the.version.is
  4. modify the source
  5. Code: Select all

    apt build-dep plank
  6. Code: Select all

    apt build plank
  7. Code: Select all

    apt deb ../plank*.deb
NeverGoingBack wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 4:44 pm Sorry, I'm not a programmer, and I'm just at the beginning stages of learning how to read code. Does the "public" imply that the program is looking in an online repository for the icon, or is that "public" in the sense of "files accessible to all the user accounts on the local machine"?
Neither, it is an access modifier controlling what code can access that method.
NeverGoingBack

Re: Merging Best Features of Plank Dock and Mint Panel/Menu

Post by NeverGoingBack »

Thanks for both of the previous replies. I'll mess around with this stuff some when I have time.
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