Suggested changes to the menubuilder etc.

[Bill Medland]

I am intending doing some work and submitting some patches to 
"improve" the integration with the operating system desktop 
integration.  Rather than waste time coding up my ideas and 
having Alexandre reject them I thought I'd start by specifying 
what I intend and awaiting a barrage of complaints.  So please 
do comment.

1. I reckon it would be a good idea if somewhere we actually 
wrote some prose that actually declared what it was we were 
trying to achieve.  I have a real issue with trying to decide if 
the code does what it does because of a deliberate decision, 
because either Windows or Linux or ... changed or because we 
just had not got around to implementing what we want.  Prose is 
much better for that.  I could put it in the Wine Developer's 
Guide, in the Wiki (where?), or as a text file in the 
winemenubuilder directory (my preference).  Any comments?

2. My main issue is that we do not replicate the menu structure 
under the start menu (and presumably the desktop too but I 
haven't looked there).  The program I am working with goes 
several layers below the Programs directory.  I see that 
wineshelllink is able to take a path for the link but 
winemenubuilder doesn't use that.  I intend adding to 
winemenubuilder so that it passes a more complete link, with 
path, to get the depth.

3. I want to do something about looking for icons when the target 
is actually data, not an executable.  Either I will just use no 
icon or I will see what I can do about looking up the handler 
for the file type and going from there (possibly even using the 
native OS's handler e.g. pdf files).

Any complaints?

[Alexandre Julliard]

Bill Medland  writes:
> - I reckon it would be a good idea if somewhere we actually
>
> wrote some prose that actually declared what it was we were 
> trying to achieve.  I have a real issue with trying to decide if 
> the code does what it does because of a deliberate decision, 
> because either Windows or Linux or ... changed or because we 
> just had not got around to implementing what we want.  Prose is 
> much better for that.  I could put it in the Wine Developer's 
> Guide, in the Wiki (where?), or as a text file in the 
> winemenubuilder directory (my preference).  Any comments?

It should go into the source file. It won't be maintained if it's a
separate file.

[Scott Ritchie]

On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 14:51 -0800, Bill Medland wrote:
> I am intending doing some work and submitting some patches to 
> "improve" the integration with the operating system desktop 
> integration.  Rather than waste time coding up my ideas and 
> having Alexandre reject them I thought I'd start by specifying 
> what I intend and awaiting a barrage of complaints.  So please 
> do comment.
> - I reckon it would be a good idea if somewhere we actually
>
> wrote some prose that actually declared what it was we were 
> trying to achieve.  I have a real issue with trying to decide if 
> the code does what it does because of a deliberate decision, 
> because either Windows or Linux or ... changed or because we 
> just had not got around to implementing what we want.  Prose is 
> much better for that.  I could put it in the Wine Developer's 
> Guide, in the Wiki (where?), or as a text file in the 
> winemenubuilder directory (my preference).  Any comments?
> - My main issue is that we do not replicate the menu structure
>
> under the start menu (and presumably the desktop too but I 
> haven't looked there).  The program I am working with goes 
> several layers below the Programs directory.  I see that 
> wineshelllink is able to take a path for the link but 
> winemenubuilder doesn't use that.  I intend adding to 
> winemenubuilder so that it passes a more complete link, with 
> path, to get the depth.

If you want prose, check out my (draft) spec for a super-cool integrated
Wine in Ubuntu:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BetterIntegratedWineSpec

I would be forever grateful if you could help me get this working nice
by doing what can be done upstream.

As for where Wine needs to put .desktop files to put new entries in the
applications menu, the standard place from what I hear is in
~/.local/share/applications.  As for adding a new "Windows" program
group, that has to be done somewhere else, but I believe that's out of
the scope of Wine at the moment (ie: in another package).

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie

[Bill Medland]

On December 15, 2005 01:00 am, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 14:51 -0800, Bill Medland wrote:
> > I am intending doing some work and submitting some patches
> > to "improve" the integration with the operating system
> > desktop integration.  Rather than waste time coding up my
> > ideas and having Alexandre reject them I thought I'd start
> > by specifying what I intend and awaiting a barrage of
> > complaints.  So please do comment.

SNIP
> If you want prose, check out my (draft) spec for a super-cool
> integrated Wine in Ubuntu:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BetterIntegratedWineSpec
>
> I would be forever grateful if you could help me get this
> working nice by doing what can be done upstream.
>
> As for where Wine needs to put .desktop files to put new
> entries in the applications menu, the standard place from what
> I hear is in ~/.local/share/applications.  As for adding a new
> "Windows" program group, that has to be done somewhere else,
> but I believe that's out of the scope of Wine at the moment
> (ie: in another package).
>
> Thanks,
> Scott Ritchie

Thanks for the comments, Scott.

Regarding your spec:

In Design/Nautilus and Gnome/Para 2:  It is not clear which icon 
you mean.  Do you mean the icon that appears in Nautilus and 
which the user double-clicks or otherwise "executes"?  If so 
then I disagree; that icon should be the executable's icon; the 
package provider has gone to the trouble to produce an icon that 
reflects the program and it should be used; at that level it 
should not be relevant that it is running under Wine.  If you 
mean the "busy cursor" then maybe I agree, but what does it 
achieve?  Anyway, why should the Wine icon be used; does the 
user really care how the program is being executed?

[Joseph Garvin]

Bill Medland wrote:
> On December 15, 2005 01:00 am, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 14:51 -0800, Bill Medland wrote:
> > > I am intending doing some work and submitting some patches
> > > to "improve" the integration with the operating system
> > > desktop integration.  Rather than waste time coding up my
> > > ideas and having Alexandre reject them I thought I'd start
> > > by specifying what I intend and awaiting a barrage of
> > > complaints.  So please do comment.
>
> SNIP
> > If you want prose, check out my (draft) spec for a super-cool
> > integrated Wine in Ubuntu:
> >
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BetterIntegratedWineSpec
> >
> > I would be forever grateful if you could help me get this
> > working nice by doing what can be done upstream.
> >
> > As for where Wine needs to put .desktop files to put new
> > entries in the applications menu, the standard place from what
> > I hear is in ~/.local/share/applications.  As for adding a new
> > "Windows" program group, that has to be done somewhere else,
> > but I believe that's out of the scope of Wine at the moment
> > (ie: in another package).
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Scott Ritchie
>
> Thanks for the comments, Scott.
>
> Regarding your spec:
>
> In Design/Nautilus and Gnome/Para 2:  It is not clear which icon 
> you mean.  Do you mean the icon that appears in Nautilus and 
> which the user double-clicks or otherwise "executes"?  If so 
> then I disagree; that icon should be the executable's icon; the 
> package provider has gone to the trouble to produce an icon that 
> reflects the program and it should be used; at that level it 
> should not be relevant that it is running under Wine.  If you 
> mean the "busy cursor" then maybe I agree, but what does it 
> achieve?  Anyway, why should the Wine icon be used; does the 
> user really care how the program is being executed?

I know I'd find some indicator that a binary is not native useful. I 
think the best icon would be to have the application's icon with a small 
wine glass in the lower right or lower left corner.

[Scott Ritchie]

On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 09:36 -0800, Bill Medland wrote:
> On December 15, 2005 01:00 am, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 14:51 -0800, Bill Medland wrote:
> > > I am intending doing some work and submitting some patches
> > > to "improve" the integration with the operating system
> > > desktop integration.  Rather than waste time coding up my
> > > ideas and having Alexandre reject them I thought I'd start
> > > by specifying what I intend and awaiting a barrage of
> > > complaints.  So please do comment.
>
> SNIP
> > If you want prose, check out my (draft) spec for a super-cool
> > integrated Wine in Ubuntu:
> >
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BetterIntegratedWineSpec
> >
> > I would be forever grateful if you could help me get this
> > working nice by doing what can be done upstream.
> >
> > As for where Wine needs to put .desktop files to put new
> > entries in the applications menu, the standard place from what
> > I hear is in ~/.local/share/applications.  As for adding a new
> > "Windows" program group, that has to be done somewhere else,
> > but I believe that's out of the scope of Wine at the moment
> > (ie: in another package).
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Scott Ritchie
>
> Thanks for the comments, Scott.
>
> Regarding your spec:
>
> In Design/Nautilus and Gnome/Para 2:  It is not clear which icon 
> you mean.  Do you mean the icon that appears in Nautilus and 
> which the user double-clicks or otherwise "executes"?  If so 
> then I disagree; that icon should be the executable's icon; the 
> package provider has gone to the trouble to produce an icon that 
> reflects the program and it should be used; at that level it 
> should not be relevant that it is running under Wine.  If you 
> mean the "busy cursor" then maybe I agree, but what does it 
> achieve?  Anyway, why should the Wine icon be used; does the 
> user really care how the program is being executed?

By this I meant the default executable icon in the nautilus explorer.
An executable installed by a package wouldn't be launched in nautilus
this way, nor would most Windows programs once installed (they would
instead be launched in the applications menu).

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie

[Bill Medland]

On December 15, 2005 01:00 am, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 14:51 -0800, Bill Medland wrote:
> > I am intending doing some work and submitting some patches
> > to "improve" the integration with the operating system
> > desktop integration.  Rather than waste time coding up my
> > ideas and having Alexandre reject them I thought I'd start
> > by specifying what I intend and awaiting a barrage of
> > complaints.  So please do comment.

SNIP
> As for where Wine needs to put .desktop files to put new
> entries in the applications menu, the standard place from what
> I hear is in ~/.local/share/applications.

Doesn't seem to work too well on my Red Hat Enterprise Linux

SNIP
> Thanks,
> Scott Ritchie