Whisker menu oddness

[dolphin_oracle]

that is a serious weather app!

and the jessie version does go into the "other" menu category.

more info as I have it.

FYI Ancient_Hermit, synaptic is a front end for the apt tools, so installing with synaptic is more or less identical to apt-get, at least on the backend. synaptic does hide some output behind little arrows that you can click while install is happening so you can see the terminal output.

Well. yes, it is seriously useful at any rate! Keep it within say 3 days max and it will give you some idea of the tendencies to come for that period. Longer period than that is utter folly in weather.

Perhaps I was missing the "more or less" somewhat?

Is it safe to say that the items that vanish from your favorites are all in the "Other" menu category otherwise?

[dolphin_oracle]

OK, I can trigger the behavior in whiskermenu.

Right click the whiskermenu icon, select Properties, then use the checkbox from "Show Menu Hierarchy".

The "Other" category will disappear from the display. Favorites from "Other" will also be removed from the whiskermenu-20.rc file, so favorites won't be saved. Re-disable 'Show Menu hierarchy" and it will not return. Login/Logout out and the Other category will return but favorites are gone.

The xfce4-applications menu takes longer to disappear from, but it will eventually.

[Ancient_Hermit]

Zygrib doesn't appear to be in the Debian or MX repo. Maybe that is why it is causing issues.
Just because someone packaged it as a deb does not mean it is compatible with MX (or Debian)

6.2.3-1 is in jessie repo.

I'm going to install it and see what happens.

There's also a 7.0.0 version in Sid/Stretch (https://packages.debian.org/source/stretch/zygrib) that our CR packagers could probably backport to be compatible with Jessie and/or MX15.

Oooooh, now that sounds really nice!

The present Linux version 6.2.3 mentioned above does feel a bit behind the version I was last using on Windows in some small details. Not essentials of course, but you do miss them when you spot their absence.

[Ancient_Hermit]

that is a serious weather app!

and the jessie version does go into the "other" menu category.

more info as I have it.

FYI Ancient_Hermit, synaptic is a front end for the apt tools, so installing with synaptic is more or less identical to apt-get, at least on the backend. synaptic does hide some output behind little arrows that you can click while install is happening so you can see the terminal output.

Well. yes, it is seriously useful at any rate! Keep it within say 3 days max and it will give you some idea of the tendencies to come for that period. Longer period than that is utter folly in weather.

Perhaps I was missing the "more or less" somewhat?

Is it safe to say that the items that vanish from your favorites are all in the "Other" menu category otherwise?

Erm, like old Carlsberg ads (with Bill the Bear voice overs), all I can say is "Probably".

If I spot any others going walk about I'll certainly tell you right after I see it. Promise!

[Jerry3904]

OK, I can trigger the behavior in whiskermenu.

Right click the whiskermenu icon, select Properties, then use the checkbox from "Show Menu Hierarchy".

The "Other" category will disappear from the display. Favorites from "Other" will also be removed from the whiskermenu-20.rc file, so favorites won't be saved. Re-disable 'Show Menu hierarchy" and it will not return. Login/Logout out and the Other category will return but favorites are gone.

The xfce4-applications menu takes longer to disappear from, but it will eventually.

Good work--what a weird mess. Graeme Gott is very responsive, so a bug report might get some action from him.

[dolphin_oracle]

A short-term workaround would be to create custom launchers for each app in "other" that you care about with a category that is otherwise defined. Like Education for instance with the zygrib. Then both your apps and your favorites should stick.

Here's one I made for zygrib. Its store in ~/.local/share/applications, so it won't be overwritten by any updates. You can do this with a text editor, or with the mx-menu-editor, which stores the new .desktop files in the ~/.local/share/applications as well.

ZyGrib.desktop

Code: Select all

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Zygrib
Exec=/usr/bin/zyGrib
Comment=weather data app
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/zygrib.png
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Categories=Education;

[Ancient_Hermit]

A short-term workaround would be to create custom launchers for each app in "other" that you care about with a category that is otherwise defined. Like Education for instance with the zygrib. Then both your apps and your favorites should stick.

Here's one I made for zygrib. Its store in ~/.local/share/applications, so it won't be overwritten by any updates. You can do this with a text editor, or with the mx-menu-editor, which stores the new .desktop files in the ~/.local/share/applications as well.

ZyGrib.desktop

Code: Select all

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Zygrib
Exec=/usr/bin/zyGrib
Comment=weather data app
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/zygrib.png
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Categories=Education;

Thanks very much,

I made that file, and when I did, "other" went again!

At least it's consistent when seen that way!

I guess if we had an easy way to determine categories and create them as needed by existing programs then this would all become simple? Well, more simple, anyway!

[kmathern]

...ZyGrib.desktop

Code: Select all

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Zygrib
Exec=/usr/bin/zyGrib
Comment=weather data app
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/zygrib.png
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Categories=Education;

Thanks very much,

I made that file, and when I did, "other" went again! ;)

At least it's consistent when seen that way!

I guess if we had an easy way to determine categories and create them as needed by existing programs then this would all become simple? Well, more simple, anyway! ;)

Was zyGrib the only entry you had in the "Other" category? It was when I installed it.

The "Other" category also went away for me when I made D_O's changes but a 'zyGrib' entry does now appear in the "Education" category, the disappearance of "Other" makes sense to me now that zyGrib is in a different category.

I wonder what categories Whiskermenu considers to be valid before it dumps things in the "Other" category? Are they just the categories that we see in the Whiskermenu by default on MX15, or are there some additional categories?

[Ancient_Hermit]

I also had Viking in there, it will come back after another log in and out.

Beyond that program it's just wine stuff that comes and goes with the "other" folder.

Viking is due for uninstall as it's rather poor, and the others for wine already have a fix by way of panel launchers.

I think that probably covers it. Got a nagging feeling I forgot something, but maybe it will call back later if it was properly important.

[dolphin_oracle]

this may give you some insight into main categories

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ ... y-registry

whisker, and the xfce applications menu as far as I can tell, will show the "Main Categories" in the first table.


you can also look in /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu