File and Directory based application menu for puppy?

[mistfire]

Is there any file system based application menu for Puppy or in other linux distro? This kind of app menu render the menu layout and entries by reading the files and directory in a path instead of reading the menu list file.

This is the technique used in Windows start menu. I think by using this technique makes the package management easier and mroe interoperable. Also the user interfaces will be more standardize.

[musher0]

Hi mistfire.

Welcome to the kennels!

You could try the launch base and menu I'm working on to see if it fits any
of your needs :
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#871466

I've not published it on the English side yet (the docs are not ready and the
layout for the English needs to be double-checked), but it's bilingual
English-French, in the sense that it switches to English if the system
language variable is not French.

It can't be compared to the Whinedose menu, that's for sure, but at least
you'll have a taste of a different kind of approach.

Thanks in advance for testing (if you want).

BFN (bye for now)

musher0

[disciple]

This is the technique used in Windows start menu. I think by using this technique makes the package management easier and mroe interoperable. Also the user interfaces will be more standardize.

Well, no - it won't make package management easier because the menu system doesn't really have anything to do with package management.
And it won't make anything more standardized - it will make it less standardized because there is already a standard, and it would be a new system which doesn't follow the standard.

In a system which follows the standard the menus are generated from the *.desktop files in places like /usr/share/applications/, and the menu structure is defined in *.menu files somewhere like /etc/xdg/menus. On puppy the menu normally needs to be regenerated by running `fixmenus`, because jwm does not support generating menus on the fly, but this is not really normal these days.

I guess what you're suggesting doing is basically doing away with the *.menu files, and putting the *.desktop files in directories whose names would be used to generate the folder structure. But then how would you define tooltips, and folder names for different languages? How would 3rd party developers deal with distros that are slightly different? And on a multi-user system how would you allow programs installed in normal user accounts rather than system-wide to show up in those user's menus? There are lots of problems like this to solve to create a robust standard (some have obvious solutions for the concept you envisage, but not all of them), and people have already gone to the trouble of solving them and producing a standard which works well and is pretty close to ubiquitous.