11.10. menudrake: customize your menus

In order to help you manage the main menu, Linux-Mandrake provides you with a brand new menu-editor that'll ensure menus from all desktop environments (like KDE or GNOME) are coherent.

When you launch menudrake, it first scans your current menu structure and displays it. The main window (figure 11-21) is divided in two parts: the menu itself on the left, and on the right a form about the highlighted menu item.

Figure 11-21. The menudrake main window

You can click on the + signs of the tree to view the content of the related directory, - to hide it.

Warning

You may see in your tree entries that actually do not appear in your menu. They are in fact empty directories that are not worth displaying.

11.10.1. Add a new menu entry

This should seldom happen as all Linux-Mandrake graphical applications provide a menu entry. However, you may want to add a menu entry for a package you compiled yourself, or for a console mode program. Let's imagine here you want to check your home directory disk usage through a menu entry in Applications+Monitoring.

Select then the Monitoring directory, and click on the Add entry on the tool bar. An entry called Application 1 appears, you need now to edit it to what you want. First change the title to say "Home usage", it's the name that'll appear in the menu. Then put a Long menu if you wish to, it'll appear on the explication balloon, let's put "Displays the size of your home directory". Finally you need to provide the action to be executed by the system (Command:): "du -shc". Do not forget to check the Open in a terminal box, as du is not a graphical application.

If you wish to, you can also choose an icon for your entry from the list you get by clicking on the icon itself. figure 11-22 reflects the above modifications. If you are satisfied with it, click on the Save icon.

Figure 11-22. Adding a new menu entry with menudrake

Tip

In case that you made a big mess with your menus and wish to come back to an anterior state, you can go to File->Reload user config (Ctrl+R) (reload the menus as they were at last save) or File->Reload system menu to come back to the virgin menus as they were at system install.

Finally to activate your changes, click on the Save button, and voila, Congratulations! you can now test your work by going to the real menu and launch your new creation.

Note

Depending on the windows manager you currently use, the changes on your menu may be immediate or not. In some cases, you may need to logout and login again for the changes to take effect.

11.10.2. Advanced features

11.10.2.1. About the Context menu

The entry we just added to the menu is now available in all graphical managers' menu. It is also possible to make modifications to a specific menu by switching the Context you are working with. For example, if you wish to add an application that should be available only in the KDE menu, simply switch from context all to kde.

All entries that apply to the selected context only appears in blue in the tree structure on the left.

11.10.2.2. Moving and removing entries

menudrake entries support the drag-and-drop feature. That means that you can take an entry from a directory and move it to another simply by clicking on the entry and move it to the new directory without releasing the mouse button.

Similarly, you may have noticed that whenever you suppress an application from the menu, it appears in the "attic": the Available applications list on the bottom right corner. If you ever wish to add them again, you simply have to drag them again to the desired directory.


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