I too felt like this, we should have a interface or a small tool like what kde
has kde-menuedit sort of.. I have done some hacking on that and have a small
stuff in place.. Im attaching a screen shot of that.. can you people comment on
it.. so that i can have more focus and get one such thing for gnome in the next
release :-)

Created attachment 26846 [details]
The screen shot of my little hack for a interface. Comment on it :-)

I talked to Srinivasa briefly about this on irc.

I think we need two things:

  + Menu editing for users should become a simple on/off toggle for menu
    items. I think that covers most interesting use cases and has a
    beautiful simplicity about it (seth suggested this originally)

  + A "vfolder editor" for sysadmins who want to customize the menu 
    significantly before deploying GNOME. This would expose the fact
    that rather editing a simple hierarchy of menu items you are in fact
    editing a query against a set of .desktop files

I'm going to abuse some fields a little; this is important for manageability
acc. to a lot of our customers, and more relevantly to prioritization, lots and
lots of our regular users want this too. Let's see if we can't track it and
finish it in 2.8. Thanks for raising it again, James and Srinivasa.

Mark, should we split it into two bugs then, one for each?

Mark, comments on Luis' question?

*** Bug 150507 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Bug #150507 was about the fact that when you remove a menu item, there is no
confirmation dialog and you have no possibility to make it appear again. If we
have a simple on/off toggle for menu items, then this will be fixed.

In bug #75955, Calum noted that if the user adds a submenu, it should not be
shown in the menu bar if it's empty. It should however be visible in the menu
editor so the user can add items there.

If items are just checked on and off, there wouldn't be a capability for users
to create new submenus (empty or otherwise). 

In the event of an application to manage the gnome menu I think we would want to
make sure there is an option to add NEW items. And perhaps, while still sticking
to the freedesktop guidelines setting up a standard for Applications to add to
the gnome menu. 
A program to scan for programs and create menu items depending on what the scan
returns. I can try to do whatever I can but I know very little about coding so
far.  

Please don't forget as reference for implementation this[1] thread on
desktop-devel list and this[2] mochup from Calum Benson

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-May/msg00232.html
[2] http://www.gnome.org/~calum/usability/specs/menu-edit/

I might start to work on this. Thanks for the pointers, Luca.

*** Bug 168239 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Will be menu editor in gnome 2.10 ?

Mantas: unfortunately, no.

When might we expect a working implimentation of this?

James: I don't know. It depends on how much free time I'll have in the next few
weeks.

Christian is also working on something like this (based on the mockup mentioned
in comment #11 above, FWIW):
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-February/msg00187.html

His first tarball here:
http://manny.cluecoder.org/packages/gnome-menu-editor/gnome-menu-editor-0.1.tar.gz

*** Bug 170048 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Now the panel has simple-menu-editor [1] and gnome-menu-editor exists in
parallel, the former shipped with gnome-panel 2.11.1, the latter requiring it.

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-April/msg00069.html

Oh, we've had this for a while now:


2005-05-18  Mark McLoughlin  <mark@skynet.ie>

        Add an "Edit Menus" menu item to the menu bar
        and menu button context menu. Based on a patch
        from Vijaykumar Patwari <vijaykumar.patwari@wipro.com>
        in bug #129073.

        * panel-menu-bar.c:
        (panel_menu_bar_load): add an "Edit Menus" context
        menu if gmenu-simple-editor is installed.
        (panel_menu_bar_invoke_menu): Run gmenu-simple-editor
        if Edit Menus is clicked.

        * panel-menu-button.c:
        (panel_menu_button_load),
        (panel_menu_button_invoke_menu): ditto here.

But it doesn't work for me on HEAD:

Traceback (most recent call last):

+ Trace 60938

The column title to show or hide a menu item is incorrect. It is currently
"Hide" but enabling the checkbox in that column actually enables the *showing*
of the menu item not making it hidden.

To follow Mantas's earlier question, will there be a menu editor in GNOME 2.12?

There will be a simple one, and I know of at least two others that have been
written.

Yet the provided menu editor only allows you to set whether or not an item is
visible!

The menu editor included with the gnome 2.12 beta is woefully inadequate.

Minimum abilities of any included menu editor should be :

* Allow user to create new menu folders and launchers
* Allow user to drag and drop launchers/folders from one menu to another
* Allow user to delete launchers/folders from the menu
* Allow user to edit launchers/folders

Yet the provided menu editor only allows you to set whether or not an item is
visible! Simple is actually an understatement when it comes to describing the
features of this menu editor.

Why not include smeg (http://www.realistanew.com/projects/smeg/) as the default
menu editor? It is actually useful and most importantly, it works.

James: See [1] for Mark's remarks on a full-fledged menu editor.

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-April/msg00069.html 

I've read it, but I don't agree.

For a developer to state that they "aren't sure" if a user is going to do
something is fair enough, but to enforce his personal preference is wrong, the
user has no choice with this menu editor. Personally, I've read the
specification, I've been hand editing my menu items since it was introduced, I
like it. But try and think of how a new user would interact with the desktop.
Nautilus now has many CD writing features that I'll, and I'm sure many others,
will never use because (and rightly so) if a user wanted to copy a CD, burn some
music etc, having the options available in nautilus so that it "just works"
should a user look there is fine. So why isn't the same logic applied to the
menu editor? Fair enough, not everyone will want to edit the menu, but the users
that do want this feature will find a program severely lacking any
functionality, and it certainly won't be the experienced Linux users who will
end up being frustrated with it.

I can think of numerous examples where a user might want to either add a new
launcher (downloaded a game they've installed in their home folder, it didn't
add a launcher to the menu, now what? Not everyone, especially people new to
this system, will want to either browse to the launcher in nautilus, or use a
command line) or edit existing launchers (I want to add gnomesu before a command
on one of my menu items for example). 

Yes, applications exist out there to do what I want, such as smeg, but why
should any user have to either read the specification or spend time searching
the web for answers to help him or her find the functionality that any
application "Edit Menus" application should have in the first place.

looks like a good integration into the desktop is too hard and would take too
much time.

A menu editor solves the problem fast, people can polish it and integrate it later.

I dont like the idea of having a separate menu manager, too. But its not as
important as fixing the lack of user-menu-editing at all.

But James, you can try do it and send patches to the mailinglist instead of only
discussing it in bugzilla - this doesnt help anyone.

If this type of discussion here "doesnt help anyone", then what's the bugzilla for?

As for "too hard" and "taking too much time", there was no menu editor in 2.10
and there may aswell not be one in 2.12 for all the good it does. Just how long
will we have to wait?

I don't need to sumbit patches, smeg already provides the basic menu editing
functions that anyone will need, why not include that with 2.12 instead?

Bugzilla is to track bug and enhancements, including patches and progress on the
bugs. For discussions, use a mailinglist. Way more people will be able to see
and discuss it. Suggest to bring this up to the usability list, if they agree it
will be much easier.