Mageia forum

Running Magiea 2 beta 3 kde 32 bit.

Is there a way to alphabetize the main categories in the application launcher menu?

I have searched the internet and also tried moving the different entries to no avail.

Thanks,
houndhen

Using the menu editor, it should be possible. You can reach it via right clicking the launcher button and choosing "Edit applications" (translated from german)

Normally this can simply be done by drag'n'drop, but it doesn't work in MGA2B3, neither as user nor as root.

alf's post mirrors mine.

alf wrote:Normally this can simply be done by drag'n'drop, but it doesn't work in MGA2B3, neither as user nor as root.

To be clear, are you talking about the top menus, or some menu items (i.e. single programs). But anyways, neither works for me on mga1.

doktor5000 wrote:

alf wrote:Normally this can simply be done by drag'n'drop, but it doesn't work in MGA2B3, neither as user nor as root.

To be clear, are you talking about the top menus, or some menu items (i.e. single programs). But anyways, neither works for me on mga1.

Can't verify for MGA1 as I haven't any working MGA1 installation ATM, but in Mandriva 2011 it works as described. And yes I'm talking about the top menues(categories).

doktor5000 wrote:

alf wrote:Normally this can simply be done by drag'n'drop, but it doesn't work in MGA2B3, neither as user nor as root.

To be clear, are you talking about the top menus, or some menu items (i.e. single programs). But anyways, neither works for me on mga1.

I am talking about the menu items not single programs. My menu has the 'internet' group at the top and groups that start with a 'D' down lower. It turns finding what you want into a search.

After hours trying, it can still be done.... but is very very difficult to point the right place for the menu items. In most cases it was ordered as item in a different submenu. I gave up

I was able to move some individial programs by copying and pasting and then going back and deleting the one that I didn't want anymore.

There have been 2 ways to add sub-menu items to the panel: (1) drag and drop - that appears to have gone for good, (2) a sequence of actions (see below) which should still work, but which has "bugged out" in cauldron - there is an open bug on this issue since november.

(2) should work if the following steps are done

1. do an "unlock widgets"
2. pop up the desktop application menu (using the classical kde menu)
3. navigate with your mouse (just move, no click) in the launcher menu and its submenus
4. when the pointer is over the desired sub-menu item, do a right click
5. you get a popup menu where you can select "Add to panel" (that is what you want) or "Add to desktop"

As a consequence, a popup-launcher icon will be added in your panel. When the bug appeared (transition to kde4.7), hitting this launcher just produced an error message. A recent update (Kde 4.8.2) brought some improvement: hitting the launcher really pops up a sub-menu, but not the one you want.

If you are willing to do a little bit of hacking, you can obtain the correct behaviour by editing .kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc, this is quite easy: you have to correct the "relativePath=..." line in the item that defines the popup menu - quite easy to do, but I do not want to clobber this reply by technical details - say if you need these details.

I also have a script, that automatically adds a set of submenu launcher icons to the panel (i.e. an icon for each top-level submenu of a custom menu added by the user with kmenuedit) and that is a workaround to this bug. Might be of some common interest, but would need some smoothing for use elsewhere (and an alphabetic sort could easily be done - however, I prefer to fix the sequence by the sequence in which I add submenus with kmenuedit)

PS: I had quoted a wrong bugzilla reference initially, is now corrected

I have the same problem as houndhen in Beta 3 32 bit. The default menu launcher is classical. Applications do not appear in alphabetical order: My order is: Internet; Office; Graphics, Sound & Video; Tools; Documentation. Why this order instead of alphabetical? Doesn't make sense. When I switch to application launcher style (kickoff), my preferred launcher, applications under the applications tab appear in the same illogical order. In Mageia 1 I corrected this by right clicking on the start button, then going to Edit Applications and sort the Applications categories: Internet, Office, etc., manually in alphabetical order. All kde distros I have known have the Applications categories in the Applications tab of the kickoff menu in alphabetical order except Mandriva and now Mageia. I have tried to correct this running Beta 3 in Virtualbox and live cd. It doesn't work neither way. I guess it's a bug.

You can easily (at this level) customize your desktop menu yourself: just create the file ~/.config/menus/applications-kmenuedit.menu and put the following data into this file

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC '-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN' 'http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/1.0/menu.dtd'>
<Menu>
<Layout>
  <Merge type="menus"/>
  <Menuname>Development</Menuname>
  <Menuname>Education</Menuname>
  <Menuname>Internet</Menuname>
  <Menuname>Games</Menuname>
  <Menuname>Graphics</Menuname>
  <Menuname>Office</Menuname>
  <Menuname>Sciences</Menuname>
  <Menuname>SoundVideo</Menuname>
  <Menuname>Tools</Menuname>
 </Layout>
</Menu>


This is not hacking, it is manually editing user configuration data that is in a standard format.

A couple of issues to consider:

- create an empty .config/menus directory in case it does not yet exist;
- in case you had already edited your desktop menu, applications-kmenuedit.menu will already exist and contain the definition of all the modifications you have already done - in that case, rather then creating, you must edit that file - the section that determines the sequence of the top-level menus is at the very end;
- I am not sure whether it is OK to manually edit this file while you (your user-id) have already a kde session running. Best prepare the data and copy them while you dont have a kde session open under your own user id (use a system console - e.g. Ctrl-Alt-F2 - or a kde session of another user - but with su and cd into your own userid)

PS: I agree that the desktop menu in Mandriva and Mageia is a far from ideal compromise between conflicting needs/opinions of different users - though the principal blame of your complaints should go to the kde people, who do a very poor job in maintaining the quality of many things that are beyond their current principle interest.

Thanks juergen_harms. I tried your solution in Mageia RC2. After the file is created it allows me to organize applications in alphabetical order usin kde menu editor.