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Re: Generating a Menu

On Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:13:07 +0300
Jason Brower <encompass@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think that's a nifty idea, is there a way to pull the icons too?
> Regards,
> Jason
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 10:01 -0700, John H. Robinson, IV wrote:
> > sean wrote:
> > > Any chance an upcoming release could include the tools to auto generate 
> > > an application menu if desired?
> > > 
> > > Perhaps a button in the preferences area?
> > 
> > Where would it get that information from?
> > 
> > I can think of a few ideas - the package manager similar to Debian's
> > menu system; search through $PATH; drag and drop from a file browser.
> > 
> > -- 
> > John H. Robinson, IV          jaqque@sbih.org
> >                                                                  http  ((((
> > WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above,         sbih.org ( )(:[
> > as apparently my cats have learned how to type.          spiders.html  ((((
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> To unsubscribe, send mail to wmaker-user-unsubscribe@lists.windowmaker.info.

In the sources there is util/wkdemenu.pl which was for generating menus from kde *.lnk files which were nearly the same as desktop files. It could be altered to do a better job with desktop files. My perl skills are nil, so I had written a similar tool in bash:

$ cat wm-gen-desktop-menu
#!/bin/bash
# /usr/bin/wm-gen-desktop-menu
# Gilbert Ashley <amigo@ibiblio.org>

# this script can be used to generate a WindowMaker submenu
# of installed programs which have a *.desktop file
# the script expects a directory path as an argument.

# In order to use this script, you need to first create a directory structure which
# holds the menu categories as subdirectories with the *.desktop files in them.
# To do that, first run the script /usr/bin/wm-update-desktop-menus
# By default, this will create the menu subdirectories in ~/GNUstep/DesktopMenus
# or you can use another directory by passing the directory path as an argument to the script

# Then, you can add a line this to your WindowMaker WMRootMenu file:
# ("Desktop Applications", OPEN_MENU, "|| /usr/bin/wm-gen-desktop-menu ~/GNUstep/DesktopMenus"),
# Or you can use the WPrefs application to add a 'Generated Submenu' with this command:
# /usr/bin/wm-gen-desktop-menu ~/GNUstep/DesktopMenus

if [ $1 ] ; then
	DESKTOP_FILES_PATH=$1
else
	DESKTOP_FILES_PATH=~/GNUstep/DesktopMenus
fi

cd $DESKTOP_FILES_PATH
echo \"Desktop Menu\" MENU
for DIR in $(find * -type d) ; do
	echo \"$DIR\" MENU
	#for DSK in $(ls -1 $DIR ) ; do
	for DSK in $DIR/* ; do
		NAME=$(grep '^Name=' $DSK |cut -f2 -d=)
		COMMAND=$(grep '^Exec=' $DSK |cut -f2 -d=)
		COMMAND=${COMMAND/\%F/\"\$\@\"}
		COMMAND=${COMMAND/\%f/\"\$\1\"}
		COMMAND=${COMMAND/\%U/\"\$\@\"}
		COMMAND=${COMMAND/\%u/\"\$\1\"}
		#echo ${DSK/#*\/} $NAME
		echo "	"\"$NAME\" EXEC "$COMMAND"
		DSK=
		NAME=
		COMMAND=
	done
	echo \"$DIR\" END
	DIR=
done
echo \"Desktop Menu\" END

I use that in combination with this:

$ cat wm-update-desktop-menus
#!/bin/bash
# This script will generate a directory and symlink structure which
# can be used with the wm-gen-desktop-menu script to create a wmaker
# menu on the fly for installed progams with a *.desktop file
# In order to keep this database up-to-date, this script should be run
# after installing new software, or it can be included in your startup

if [ $1 ] ; then
	DESKTOP_FILES_PATH=$1
else
	DESKTOP_FILES_PATH=~/GNUstep/DesktopMenus
fi

# if you already have xdg menus, then you probably have desktop files here:
if [ -d ~/.local/share/applications ] ; then
 DESKTOP_APPS=~/.local/share/applications
else
 # otherwise, use the ones installed in the system directory
 DESKTOP_APPS=/usr/share/applications
fi

for DSK in $(ls -1 $DESKTOP_APPS/*.desktop) ; do
	CATEGORIES=$(grep Categories $DSK |cut -f2 -d'=')
	OLDIFS=$IFS
	IFS=';'
	for CATEGORY in $CATEGORIES ; do
		  if ! [ -d $DESKTOP_FILES_PATH/$CATEGORY ] ; then
			mkdir -p $DESKTOP_FILES_PATH/$CATEGORY
		  fi
		  if ! [ -e $DESKTOP_FILES_PATH/$CATEGORY/$(basename $DSK) ] ; then
			# if you want to save space you can create links to the desktop files
			#ln -sf $DSK $DESKTOP_FILES_PATH/$CATEGORY/$(basename $DSK)
			# It's probably better to copy the files so they can be altered by the user
			cp $DSK $DESKTOP_FILES_PATH/$CATEGORY/$(basename $DSK)
		  fi
	done
	IFS=$OLDIFS
done

I actually started with just directly generating the menu from the system installed desktop files. But then I wanted to make it more flexible so that each user could add/delete desktop files from their own database. This is still not really desktop.org-compliant. These bash scripts are pretty slow compared to perl.

I use wmaker with ROX-Filer, so I also wrote a utility which generates a dynamic menu of ROX AppDir application directories:

$ cat wm-gen-appdir-menu
#!/bin/bash
# /usr/bin/wm-build-appdir-menu
# Gilbert Ashley <amigo@ibiblio.org>

# this script can be used to generate a sub-menu of ROX AppDirs
# for the WindowMaker menu. It expects a directory name as input.
# An example  menu entry for the plmenu (perl menu) looks like this:
# (AppDirs, OPEN_MENU, "|| /usr/bin/wm-build-appdir-menu /usr/apps"),
# Or, you can use the WPrefs application to add a 'Generated Submenu'
# with the command: /usr/bin/wm-build-appdir-menu /usr/apps

APPDIRS="$@"
if [ "$APPDIRS" = "" ] ; then
	exit
fi
for DIR in $APPDIRS ; do
	echo "\"AppDirs\" MENU"
	for AppDir in $(ls -1 $DIR) ; do
		echo $AppDir EXEC $DIR/$AppDir/AppRun
	done
	echo "\"AppDirs\" END"
done

For those to work you need an entries like these in your menu:
For the first example:
  ("Desktop Applications", OPEN_MENU, "|| /usr/bin/wm-gen-desktop-menu"),
For the second example:
  (AppDirs, OPEN_MENU, "|| /usr/bin/wm-gen-appdir-menu /usr/apps"),

Another example of simply creating a menu from the contents of a directory(which could be links to desired apps):
("Directory Contents", OPEN_MENU, "/usr/apps"),

Gilbert Ashley


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