LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre edit..

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mingle
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LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre edit..

Post by mingle »

Hi Guys,

Just another small niggle...

Last night I wanted to try and figure out why newly installed Wine/windows applications weren't showing up under the Wine menu on my Xfce start menu (which is another, separate issue!).

Here's what my 'start' menu looks like (this is the Xfce applications menu, not Whisker Menu - which I don't like):
menu_okay.png
So I went into Settings > Menu Editor, which starts Menulibre 2.0.4 to try and figure what was going on. I made one minor change (which was to remove a separator)
and saved the change, in response to a requester that popped-up. I then exited Menulibre.

However, when I looked at my start menu, this is what I got:
menu_missing.png
The top four and bottom two entries have gone!

I was stuck at this point, as I had no idea what to do next. Luckily I had a very recent image backup, which enabled my to get my LM17 install back in about 10 minutes.
As an experiment, I tried making another, minor change and again Menulibre seems to have stuffed up the menu in the same way. I also installed Whisker Menu and it
looks as though some of the entries were missing from there too - specifically the entry for Wine.

I'm guessing that Menulibre is somehow corrupting the Xfce menu configuration file(s)? I have zero experience with locating and tinkering the menu config files, so if
someone could point me in the right direction, that would be great.

Even better - if anyone else could confirm this issue with LM17 Xfce, or offer advice on what to do next, that would be great!

Cheers,

Mike.
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Pogo1

Re: LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre ed

Post by Pogo1 »

Hi Mike.

I'm pretty new in here too, but I have come across a few threads and release notes mentioning that Menulibre is broken, such as this:

Code: Select all

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=172142
A quick poke around found this folder

Code: Select all

/usr/share/menu/
which has lots of what look like desktop files in it, but not all the items in my menu are listed there. Still, you might be able to duplicate and modify an entry as a start to getting your menu together.

Let us know how you go.

Pogo.
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mingle
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Re: LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre ed

Post by mingle »

Thanks for the reply Pogo!

That thread confirms that Menulibre is in a bit of a state!

The good thing is it's not just me that's having issues.

Not sure what my next step is, but I think reverting to one of the earlier versions of Menulibre might be worth a shot.

Cheers,

Mike.
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Re: LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre ed

Post by roblm »

mingle wrote:Last night I wanted to try and figure out why newly installed Wine/windows applications weren't showing up under the Wine menu on my Xfce start menu
You can try manually editing the Xfce Applications menu configuration file in "/usr/share/xfcemint" to add those applications, as long as they
are listed in “/usr/share/applications”. Check my posts in the topic in this link for instructions:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=160784
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Re: LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre ed

Post by mingle »

Hi roblm,

Thanks for the extra info...

I open the file "/usr/share/xfcemint/xfce-applications.menu” and it doesn't seem to reflect what I'm actually seeing in my menu.

A few of the entries seem to make sense, but a lot of stuff I have on my current menu doesn't seem to be there at all.

Are the menu config files stores, or cached, somewhere else too?

Mike.
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Re: LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre ed

Post by roblm »

mingle wrote:I open the file "/usr/share/xfcemint/xfce-applications.menu” and it doesn't seem to reflect what I'm actually seeing in my menu.

A few of the entries seem to make sense, but a lot of stuff I have on my current menu doesn't seem to be there at all.

Are the menu config files stores, or cached, somewhere else too?
That's true. The contents of the configuration file doesn't reflect the menu contents entirely. However, changes made to the file will still
show up in the menu.

There is another “xfce-applications.menu” in “/etc/xdg/menus”, but it's the same menu. I don't think the other three files listed there affect
the menu, and they don't contain any information about Wine. I don't know of any other locations.

After installing Wine and doing some testing, I've found that the Wine category doesn't respond to editing like the other categories. I first
used MenuLibre (older Raring version) to add a launcher for GIMP to the Wine category. It shows up in MenuLibre but not in the menu.
See the picture below:
wine-MenuLibre.png
When I open the Whisker menu, four items are listed, as seen in the picture above. But only three are listed in the Xfce Applications
menu, as seen in the top left menu in the picture below. Windows Notepad is missing. I then added the Wine category to the configuration
file. This unexpectedly created another Wine category in the menu as seen in the top right menu in the picture. I was able to add GIMP to
this second menu, but not the first.
After some more editing of the configuration file, I was able to add the three items in the first Wine category to the second, as seen in the
bottom left menu in the picture. The name of the second menu can be changed to distinguish the two menus, as seen in the lower right
menu in the picture, and I also added Windows Notepad to it.
wine-menu-1.png
Did you check if the Windows apps you installed are in “/usr/share/applications”?

UPDATE:
There is a “wine.menu” file in “/etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged”. After renaming it, the first Wine category in the menu disappeared.
I then copied sections of code out of “wine.menu” and added it to the "xfce-applications.menu" file. This added two folders, Accessories and Programs to the second Wine category. Windows Notepad was already in the Accessories folder. Perhaps other Windows apps that are
installed will now be added to one of those two folders automatically. Otherwise they can easily be added manually. An interesting feature of
the Xfce Applications menu, in comparison to all other Mint menus, is that it is the only one that can have subcategories.
wine-menu-i.png
glitchathon
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Re: LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre ed

Post by glitchathon »

Yep same issue on Mint 17 Xfce 64-bit edition.

However, after evaluating what happened, I saw that the only issue was that Menulibre eliminated the top 4 "preferred" programs from the top of the applications menu. This was quite easy to re-add using new launchers. I found after adding them manually, everything was fine. I understand you had the extra menu items removed, but I wonder if there are a few applications or categories that somehow conflict, and once you re-add them, everything is fine?

It seems like as soon as you do anything with Menulibre, it must use its own configuration and somehow it failed to load the preferred applications (terminal, mail, file manager, and browser).

I still think that Menulibre works just fine. In fact, I was glad that those menu items disappeared because I did not want the Email application at the top. I went ahead and added new launchers for what I needed, including adding a few extra ones that I use regularly.

Have you noticed that Menulibre is in fact causing other significant problems? I didn't notice any applications disappearing, though I could've missed a few. And adding new software using apt-get seems to automatically load them into the applications menu just fine. So I have not seen any major conflicts other than the initial disappearance of the top preferred applications.

Edit: now that I think about it, I think it probably removed the logout button at the end too. I just never remembered it being there since I do use the whisker menu to logout and only use the applications menu for right-click.
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Re: LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre ed

Post by glitchathon »

The more I look into Menulibre, the more I feel like it is pretty decent. The weird part is that I do not think there ever were any of the following .desktop files in usr/share/applications folder:
- xfce4-file-manager.desktop
- xfce4-logout.desktop
- xfce4-terminal.desktop
- xfce4-web-browser.desktop
- xfce4-web-browser.desktop

Usually these files are supposed to be in that folder which would define the applications menu top level entries. But since they weren't there, it seems Menulibre may have just bypassed some other source of data that feeds the ~/.config}/menus/xfce-applications.menu file. I imagine Wine falls into this special category. So adding these .desktop files to your ~/.local/share/applications folder puts you back into a situation where you can use Menulibre again. I presume if you want a new category like "Wine", you should also add an entry for it in your xfce-applications.menu and make a subsequent .desktop file.

As for using Menulibre, the way the entries are listed is confusing. Instead of moving them into and out of different categories, it is better to modify the entry as shown in the attached image. Notice how the Categories section shows that it is in GTK+, System, Xfce menu item, and Xfce toplevel menu item.

In this case, instead of adding or moving the launcher in Menulibre, just add and delete from the categories on the EXISTING entry, regardless of what category it is in now. For instance, I left it in System, and added Xfce Toplevel. I closed and relaunched menulibre, and it shows up in the correct category, though you may have to use the up and down button to get it where you want it. If you eliminate it from a category, just close and relaunch Menulibre and it removes it for you. If you try to add multiple entries of the same launcher in different categories or move between categories in Menulibre, you will find it behaves weird. But doing it in the Categories section on existing entries simply copies the .desktop file from usr/share/applications to your ~/.local/share/applications and modifies it to match what you put into Menulibre. I find it works rock solid this way.

I say go ahead and find the existing launchers that you want at the toplevel (like file browser, web browser, terminal), which should exist in whatever category they should be in, and add the xfce-toplevel category, close and reopen Menulibre, and it should be where you want it (use up and down buttons to move them up and reorder afterwards). And then add the Wine category to the ~/.config}/menus/xfce-applications.menu file and see if you can add a .desktop entry via Menulibre (add launcher) and then set the category from the launcher Categories section.
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Re: LM17 XFCE 32 Bit - Menu items missing after menulibre ed

Post by roblm »

glitchathon wrote:The weird part is that I do not think there ever were any of the following .desktop files in usr/share/applications folder:
- xfce4-file-manager.desktop
- xfce4-logout.desktop
- xfce4-terminal.desktop
- xfce4-web-browser.desktop

Usually these files are supposed to be in that folder which would define the applications menu top level entries. But since they weren't there, it seems Menulibre may have just bypassed some other source of data that feeds the ~/.config}/menus/xfce-applications.menu file.
Those 4 programs are all in /usr/share/applications from the start. You won’t see them in the “xfce-applications.menu” file located in
“/home/user-name/.config/menus” because that file is the configuration file for the Whisker menu. The config file for the Xfce Applications
menu is in “/usr/share/xfcemint”, and there’s a similar one in “/etc/xdg/menus”. Look in the top section between the Include, Exclude
and Layout code tags.

After first opening Menulibre, these applications disappear, starting from the top: Run Program, Terminal Emulator, File Manager,
Mail Reader, Web Browser, Lock Screen and Log Out. The “desktop” extension names given to those 6 apps are:

Code: Select all

Run Program		       xfce-run.desktop
Terminal Emulator		 exo-terminal-emulator.desktop
File Manager			   exo-file-manager.desktop
Mail Reader			    exo-mail-reader.desktop
Web Browser		       exo-web-browser.desktop
Lock Screen			    mint-xfce4-lock.desktop
Log Out			        xfce-session-logout.desktop
I just did a new installation of Mint 17 Xfce and this time installed all the updates first before using MenuLibre and now it works fine for
both the Whisker menu and Applications menu, except for the 6 applications disappearing from the Applications menu main list after
first using Menulibre. If you have already used Menulibre before installing the updates, then you will find that it stops working. If you now
install the updates, it still won’t work until it’s configuration file in “/home/user-name/.config/menus” is deleted. A new one will automatically
be created.

One problem I’ve found so far is when you create a new category and add one or more launchers to it, then they won’t display in Menulibre
the next time it’s opened. So if you want to remove one of them, then the whole category must be deleted and recreated. However, most
users probably won’t be creating any new categories.
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