In another How-To in this series we looked at ways to change the entries in your "Favorites" menu. E17 comes with an in-built tool to make that particular menu easy to change. But what about the others? Well, there's some good news and some bad news.
First, the good news. The more extensive, and often chaotic, "Applications" menu is the one that most people want to change and there are tools available. It's just not obvious how to go about it.
Because (since 2007) Enlightenment conforms to the freedesktop.org menu standard (called XDG), e17 now uses the same basic configurable menu files as all the other major Linux desktop environments (ie Gnome, KDE and Xfce). This also means that the gui tools available for those DEs to edit menus will work in e17.
The "full" versions of OzOS comes with the Gnome menu editing tool called gmenu-simple-editor.
You can start this utility from the command line (or the run dialog) with the command:
gmenu-simple-editor
From the dialog box, you can select which of your installed application will appear on your menus (by ticking the box next to its name and icon).
If you get a "command not found" error when entering the command, don't worry. It just means that you don't have the gnome-menu tools installed. They are part of the oz-desktop-extras package available using apt-get, Synaptic or on the apt:foo web page under OzOS Extras. You could also just install the required tools with:
sudo apt-get install menu menu-xdg xdg-utils
The bad news? Editing with gmenu-simple-editor works only for the "Applications" Menu - e17 does not use the same "System" menu as Gnome, so the gmenu-simple-editor will not affect the e17 "System" menu entries.
Another limitation to this approach will affect those who run Gnome, KDE or Xfce along side Enlightenment - changes you make to the Applications menu will be reflected in the menus on each Desktop Environment (DE) - not just e17. That means if you "turn-off" an application in e17 it will no longer be available on Gnome/KDE/Xfce either (unless you switch it back on).
On a more positive note, the freedesktop.org menu specifications do allow for the implementation of DE-specific menu entries and for the blacklisting of individual entries on a particular DE. Unfortunately for most of us, this feature is not yet available through a gui tool and you will need to some heavy-duty config file editing to achieve it. If you are tempted, check of the freedesktop.org menu specifications and the Enlightenment menu implementation and get to work!
Aubrey
