On Sat, 2011-01-22 at 17:48 -0500, Katheryne Draven wrote: <snip> I can certainly relate to the usability issues you identify. May I suggest renaming Desktop Publishing. That has very specific meaning to many folks such as myself. I'm not sure what a good name would be because there are so many important items in there. Perhaps something like Productivity Tools, Office Tools, Business Tools - I'm not sure. I'll admit that I didn't like the KDE4 menu system at all but, as I used it more and more, I realized it did make one important improvement once it sunk in how to use it. It allowed the mouse to stay still and move the menu (via scrolling) rather than keeping the menu fixed and moving the mouse. Once I got used to that, it was much, much more productive than moving my mouse all over the screen. Would there be some way to incorporate that? Thanks - John

Long Response Incoming. Do not be offended by the response. On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 17:48, Katheryne Draven &lt;borgqueen4(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I'm sorry, being under 20 is old? o_O This is an another attempt, based on the attempt by Borg^Queen (the android running Windows Vista build 1), to improve upon the KDE menu system and make it more organized. I am going to be referring to Kickoff, the KDE3 alternate menu and the KDE4 default menu. The favorites menu is usually the first place people see – and in turn, the place that many people expect all their favorite applications to exist. When people have to put in the effort (elderly and middle-life crisis people (Borg^Queen)) to navigate to their all programs menu, it just doesn't work out. Let's keep a short list of what people come to expect here. A web browser (Firefox, Chromium, Rekonq, Midori) An email client (Thunderbird, Evolution, Kmail) Although there is the idea just to put a link to a webpage showing the most popular email sites. A word processor (LibreOffice, AbiWord, Koffice) A File Browser (Dolphin, Konqueror) A Personal Settings Link (Many distributions call it System Settings, confusing users) A System Settings Link (Requires Root Access) A help option (For the easily confused) This usually provides almost everything a user needs to get started on his/her computer. For those of us who have an application not listed in there that we want, we usually dive into the Applications tab. Let's go through a typical KDE menu. Development Education Games Graphics Internet Multimedia Office System Utilities Help (Link to help browser) YaST (or other related System Tool) This is very complicated for the modern day user. Sure, it's alphabetical! Ooh, this is great! No. It's not. Let's see an example of why. We'll use Mandriva's setup: Internet Office Graphics Sound & Video Tools Development Fewer categories, more simplicity. Of course, there's more clutter, but that's up to the user to clean up all that crap. Internet and Office at the top – The most used applications are usually Internet-connected Software and Productivity software. If I had to make a menu style, it would look a bit more like this: Internet Office Multimedia (Graphics and “Sound & Video”/”Multimedia” combined) Games Education Windows Applications (Wine) Tools (Includes System and Utilities) Development More Applications (Lost & Found... This happens rarely, but it still does) It's very close to Mandriva's, I admit that. But truthfully, it's probably the more logical one. You should see how Fedora butcher's theirs with upstream's. I've found apps in the wrong categories. You can find a few submenus. But NOT TOO MANY! That's where I think openSUSE got it wrong. It's more work to the average user, and a pain in the ass after a navigating them a few times. The search menu at the top of Kicker? I've been using SuSE and Kicker for a long time but I didn't even notice that until 11.1 came out. *Assume people are oblivious to the obvious.* I've seen stuff like this: Kickoff > Applications > Internet > Web Browsers > More > Firefox Me: -___-****** Submenus? Here's how I will break it down. Internet Messaging Web Browsers Office Office Suite Business Tools Multimedia (Graphics and “Sound & Video”/”Multimedia” combined) Graphics Music Video Games Education Windows Applications (Wine) (we can have Windows emulated start menu here) Tools (Includes System and Utilities) (see below for this) Development IDEs Debuggers (I'm drawing a blank for this) More Applications (Lost & Found... This happens rarely, but it still does) Borg^Queen did this layout: Desktop Publishing (Contains everything related to published documents of all kinds) Development Edutainment & Health Emulators Games Graphics (symlinked) Lost & Found Multimedia (both audio and video) Network Settings System User-Apps (This is a special directory that initially remains empty. Users can place their fav apps and link other menu subdir into this one. Some distros I proposed this to are now calling it a “favourite” directory.) Truthfully, I find Settings and System too similar in meaning. Emulators? Many people don't know what that is when they first try out a Linux system. Edutainment & Health: not crazy about this. Lost & Found: it's like KDE lost an app you just installed. Desktop Publishing: I saw you have Finance in there... Wouldn't that make it more than Desktop Publishing? Um... Office? I'm not going to go into the details like what kind of apps should be in each category. The thing is, less is better for some people. And giving sub-menu after sub-menu will drive someone crazy (eventually) if they are not already by looking at the structure. And regarding submenus in Tools: Tools > System-Wide Settings submenu Any system setting that isn't in YaST (or other System Tool) The Rest of the stuff here is all Utilities That nobody cares about (usually) You're then asking, where does YaST (or other system tool) and Personal Settings go? Please move the tab over to Computer in the Kicker menu and See above. For those of us who like old-fashioned mouse-moving Kmenu, It would look something like this: Recently Used Apps ----------- Internet Office Multimedia (Graphics and “Sound & Video”/”Multimedia” combined) Games Education Windows Applications (Wine) Tools (Includes System and Utilities) System-Wide Settings Random Utilities Here Development More Applications (Lost & Found... This happens rarely, but it still does) ---------- Personal Settings YaST (or related system tool) ---------- A Favorites Menu Favorite Apps here Switch User End Session In the end, all I'm trying to say is that if you break it up too much, it's worse than what it was in the beginning. Feel free to criticize, laugh, humiliate, or hate. :) -- later, Robert Xu

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 22:35, John A. Sullivan III &lt;jsullivan(a)opensourcedevel.com&gt; wrote: The way I see it, we should try to create a submenu that has a broad meaning but doesn't completely include all the apps. For example, we could say Office > Management for finance and other such applications such as to-do lists And also Office > Processors for Word/Spreadsheet/Presentation Processors... I forgot to mention - no more than one submenu. -- later, Robert Xu

On 01/22/2011 04:48 PM, Katheryne Draven wrote: Thank you Kate! I generally spend a couple of hours sorting apps into their logical places when I start with a fresh install. Standardizing kmenu into a logical order limiting each menu/submenu entry to ~ 10-15 items with a max depth of ~4 is much needed. Here are two thoughts for consideration: (1) of the existing distros that did a good job with kmenu, SuSE's inclusion of a 'Utilities' submenu that held all the kde apps really helped with organization. Here is a shot of what I adapted from an old openSuSE 11.0 install: [93k] http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/dt/trinity/ss/kmenu-utilities.jpg (2) everybody also has a subset of applications they use most frequently. What I call "mytools" or I guess what "User-Apps" is intended for in your setup. For what it is worth, here is a shot of the collection of mytools that may have a submenu or two that may be of interest: [138k] http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/dt/trinity/ss/kmenu-mytools.jpg (I don't know how the duplicate basket entries got there. On suse, when you edit the gnome menu, you often get unwanted side-effects in the k3 menu as well) I think this effort to tame the kmenu jungle is well worth the time and I thank you for your efforts. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

<snip> How about the Wiki? http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/wiki/bin/view/Developers/ProposedSystem… Tim

On 01/24/2011 05:29 PM, Timothy Pearson wrote: <snip> I think that's doable, but my first thought was the auto generated TOC wouldn't allow for alternatives to be easily shown without doing some type of table. I guess we could do something like: - autogen TOC (The Menu Entries) - Summary (Table) - Each Entry Discussion The only drawback I see to the wiki is the wiki syntax. It's not that difficult, I agree, but it can be an impediment. We would also need to keep in mind, and limit, the topic headings to the menu entries and make the topic/subtopic order reflect the menu layout. Do we want to do a 'divide-and-conquer'? Have one person on the list originally volunteer to build one of the toplevel and submenu layout in the wiki? I'll take one. We can start with Kate's proposed toplevel and go from there: Desktop Publishing Development Edutainment & Health Emulators Games Graphics Lost & Found Multimedia Network Settings System User-Apps Why don't you get the names of other volunteers and assign a name to each entry (me included) and we'll get going. For those (like me) who are not immediately familiar with the toplevel/sub/entry(and category) of Trinity. It would be helpful to get a list of the current menu hierarchy in trinity. Just a simple: file1.menu -> file2.menu -> etc. so we can confirm we get everything included. Thanks. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

On 01/24/2011 06:18 PM, David C. Rankin wrote: OK, I have started the page: http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/wiki/bin/view/Developers/ProposedSystem… but I must admit "wiki markup HATES me". I have included the toplevel and a couple of thoughts under each (hoping that would help the TOC straighten itself out), but for some reason the wiki wasn't accepting the standard section level designations of '==' and '===' and so on. (Lord knows it was probably my fault, but I was looking at a wiki markup reference and it still wasn't working...) I have found I'm much better at editing or adding to an existing wiki rather than starting one from scratch. The outline is supposed to be: ==Trinity Kmenu Standardization Proposal== ==Current Summary== ===Desktop Publishing=== ===Development=== ===Edutainment & Health=== ===Emulators=== ===Games=== ===Graphics=== ===Lost & Found=== ===Multimedia=== ===Network=== ===Settings=== ===System=== ===User-Apps=== ==Kmenu source files and inclusion order== but as you can see, the wiki is eating a few of the '==' entries and failing to recognize the '===' markup. If someone smarter than I on wiki markup can tweak it, it would be appreciated. At any rate, the page is there. If we can get the summarized information from the kmail thread in there, then I think we can pick up the collaboration on the wiki instead of in a string of emails to capture the thoughts and ideas in a single location. Since I didn't start the thread, I felt awkward providing the summary for the menu entries and I didn't want to 'step on anyones toes' by doing it. Kate, since I'm following your lead here, I don't want to usurp your effort and I'd feel better if you put your current thoughts in as a starting point. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

On 1/26/11, David C. Rankin &lt;drankinatty(a)suddenlinkmail.com&gt; wrote: Not much of a wiki user, tend to avoid social like network stuff. So I'll need some guidance and time.

On 01/26/2011 11:41 AM, Timothy Pearson wrote: Thanks Tim, Here is the wiki markup reference I'm trying to use to get the sections and TOC working: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup I know it works, I have created sections and TOC entries for the Arch Linux wiki many times. Is there some setting that can be tweaked on the trinity wiki install that would help it interpret the normal wiki markup? I've never installed a wiki package before, so I don't know if there is something similar to a httpd.conf or php.ini for it that would control how it behaves? -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.