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The menu package was inspired by the
install-fvwm2-menu program from the old fvwm2
package. However, menu tries to provide a more general interface
for menu building. With the update-menus command from this
package, no package needs to be modified for every X window manager again, and
it provides a unified interface for both text- and X-oriented programs.
Copyright ©1997 Joost Witteveen, Joey Hess, Christian Schwarz. ©2002-2005 Bill Allombert.
This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as
/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL in the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution or on the World Wide Web at
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. You can also obtain it by
writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor,
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
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Before the advent of update-menus, when the sysadmin installed a
package onto a Debian system, they would need to edit various window manager
config files to make the new program show up on, for example,
fvwm's menus. The menus could easily become out of sync with what
programs were actually available, with some menu items that didn't work, and
other programs that lacked a menu entry. update-menus and Debian's menu
package aim to solve this problem.
update-menus automatically generates menus of installed programs
for window managers and other menu programs. It should be run whenever a menu
file or menu-method file is changed. update-menus will be ran
automatically when Debian packages that contain menu files are installed or
removed from the system. Users themselves can add/delete menu items, and
should then run update-menus as that user, thus creating
window-manager startup files that are used in preference to the systemwide
files.
One problem we ran into with menu-1.x (and before) was that the number of entries in any submenu vary wildly: on my system there are only two entries in /Apps/Editors, while I'm sure that other people have more like 20 entries there. Many people complained about the fullness of certain submenus, citing scientific studies or personal experience to explain why overfull or underfull submenus are a bad thing. To overcome this, menu-2.0 now can optimize the tree itself, possibly subdividing for example the /Apps/Editors tree in, say Editors/Beginner, Editors/Experienced, or whatever, if there are many entries in that submenu, or maybe even totally removing /Apps/Editors on systems where there are few editors installed. To be able to do this, menu follows the information supplied to it in the `hints' variables (see paragraph below, or the hints chapter).
Each package that needs to add an entry to the menu tree, includes a menu file
/usr/share/menu/package-name. In this file, it will have one line
per menu entry, like this (copied from /usr/share/menu/xbase):
?package(xbase):command="/usr/bin/X11/xedit" needs="X11" \
section="Apps/Editors" title="Xedit" \
hints="Beginner,Small"
This describes the type of interface Xedit needs (X11), the menu section the menu entry should be in, the menu text, and the command that should be executed. Also, it tells menu that, if /Apps/Editors is overfull, it could put Xedit in a Apps/Editors/Beginner or Apps/Editors/Small subsection.
Whenever root runs update-menus, it will check all
menu files in /etc/menu, /usr/lib/menu,
/usr/share/menu, and run the installation scripts that display
managers like fvwm2 should provide in
/etc/menu-methods.
The menu package itself provides a set of default menu files, for people to get the idea, and to speed up things a bit. (These files should be incorporated into the package.)
Note, that substantial and incompatible changes took place with the menu-1.0 release, while substantial features were added by the release of menu-2.0. This document describes menu-2.0. Menu-2.0 now doesn't accept the menu-methods written for menu-0.x, but for most window managers that still have those old menu-methods, I have put new style menu-methods in /usr/share/doc/menu/examples. Everything written for menu-1.0 will work with menu-2.0.
Most notable changes between menu-0.x and menu-1.x are listed in the file README.changes in the menu package, the features added by menu-2.0 can be summarised here: hints, and the menu-2 compat mode. (where lines are finished by a ';' instead of a newline).
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Basically, you as user don't need to know any of how and when the startupfiles are created, but you might be interested to know anyway.
When a package that wants to add something to the menu tree gets installed, it
will run update-menus in its postinst script.
Update-menus then reads in all menu files in /etc/menu/
/usr/lib/menu, /usr/share/menu and
/usr/share/menu/default, and stores the menu entries of all
installed packages in memory. Once that has been done, it will run the
menu-methods in /etc/menu-methods/*, and pipe the information
about the menu entries to the menu-methods on stdout, so that the menu-methods
can read this. Each window-manager or other program that wants to have the
Debian menu tree, will supply a menu-method script in
/etc/menu-methods/. This menu-method then knows how to generate
the startup-file for that window manager. To facilitate this task for the
window-manager maintainers, menu provides a install-menu program.
This program can generate the startupfiles for just about every window manager.
In principle this is a very window-manager specific business. But for all window managers (and others) applies:
The file to attack is the menu-method in /etc/menu-methods/$wm,
with $wm the name of your window manager. However, if this
menu-method !include-s the menu.h file (as it
should), you can also edit that file, to make your changes work for every
installed window manager.
If the menu-method file of your window manager does !include the
menu.h file, and makes proper use of the definitions in there,
then you can look at the comments in that menu.h file to see how
you can make minor adjustments to the look of your menus in your window
manager.
To generally change the menu tree, see the next section.
If hint_optimize=true has been set in a menu-method script (actually, that definition should appear in the !include-ed menu.h file), then install-menu will try to alter the menu tree, to make every submenu have about the optimum number of menu entries (as specified by hints_nentry=...). It will do that by removing under-full submenus (only if the `parent' of that submenu isn't itself already overfull), and by possibly creating new submenus, using hints. Note, however, that the optimization of the tree takes in principle exponential time, so menu speeds up the process, at the expense of occasionally not finding the best tree. So, the tree you are presented with may not be optimal. For tuning variables, see the hint_* variables in the last chapter.
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Packages-provided menu files should be in /usr/share/menu/, unless
the menu files are actually executable binaries, in which case they go in
/usr/lib/menu/. System-local menu files should be in
/etc/menu/. User-specific menu files should be in
~/.menu/
The format is
?package(package[,package2,...]): \
field1="value1"\
field2="value2"\
Here is an example to describe the syntax of such a file:
?package(gnumeric):\ specifies what packages need to be installed
multiple requirements should be separated by
comma
needs="X11"\ what kind of environment this command expects
section="Apps/Math"\ in what section this menu entry should be
title="Gnumeric"\ the title of the menu entry
command="gnumeric" \ the command to run
hints="Gnome,Spreadsheets" \ some hints about menu placement.
icon="/usr/share/pixmaps/gnumeric.xpm" the path to the icon to use.
A number sign ("#") can be used to include comments. An entry must be terminated by a newline, however you can use \ to escape a newline.
Values must be quoted with ", and meta-character (", \, newline) must be escaped with a \.
You can include several entries in the same files.
The file must be encoded in ASCII 7bit. This is necessary to accomodate window managers that do not support 8bit. However the translations are not limited in encoding.
?package(...) contains a comma-separated list of packages that need to be installed for the menu entry to be displayed. That should include the package containing the menu file and any packages necessary to run the command not depended by the package nor essential. Users can use pseudo packages names starting by local. which are assumed to be always installed.
The fields needs, section, title and command are mandatory. Other fields are optional. Custom fields are supported, so you can add new fields for you own purpose. If a field is specified multiple times in a menuentry, the last instance will be used.
The title must follow the following requirements:
It must be short. There is an optional longtitle field for users that want longer titles.
It must be properly capitalized. Use Emacs and not emacs.
It must be unique. Two entries must not have the same title.
The following needs are documented for use in the Debian menu.
X11: if this program runs under X11.
text: if it runs under a terminal. X11 window managers will spawn a X terminal emulator.
vc: if it runs under the linux console but not under a virtual terminal.
wm: if it is a X11 window manager. The current window manager will exec(2) this program to avoid "Another window manager is running" errors.
A menu manager can use a special needs named after the package for menu entries that must only be displayed in this menu manager. Examples include fvwm modules, dwww menu entries.
A program like gnumeric which can be run on X11 as well as on a text terminal
should not have an extra entry with needs=X11 because it
will then be next to impossible to configure the window managers to spawn
rxvt instead of the default xterm.
On the other hand, if a program (like emacs) can be run as real X
application as well as in a terminal, two entries should be listed, otherwise
the program will always be run in an xterm (or rxvt).
Though you must remember, that two entries are never allowed to have the same
title. The title must be unique.
The section field hold a / separated list of hierarchical sections components.
The authoritative list of Debian's menu structure is maintained in the Debian Menu sub-policy document which is part of the Debian Policy package.
The menu structure below is included only for convenience and is not authoritative. If it disagree with the structure in the Debian Menu sub-policy, please send a wishlist bug to the menu package.
Please do not put your packages into any other sections.
Apps - normal apps
Databases - interactive database programs
Editors - text editors, word processors
Education - educational and training programs
Emulators - dosemu, etc.
Graphics - image manipulation
Hamradio - anything relating to ham radio.
Math - maxima, octave, oleo, etc.
Net - mail, news, web, irc, etc.
Programming - debuggers, etc.
Science - scientific programs
Tools - other tools: xclock, xmag, xman, etc.
Technical - technical stuff.
Text - text oriented tools other than editors.
Shells - bash, ksh, zsh, etc.
Sound - sound players and editors
Viewers - image viewers
System - system administration and monitoring tools
Games - games and recreations
Adventure - walk around virtual space, zork, MOO's, etc
Arcade - any game where reflexes count
Board - like gnuchess, pente, gnugo
Card - solitaire, etc
Puzzles - Stuff from xpuzzles, ...
Simulation
Sports - Games derived from "real world" sports
Strategy - games involving long term strategic thinking
Tetris-like - games involving falling blocks
Toys - oneko, xeyes, etc.
Help - programs that provide user documentation
Screen - programs that affect the whole screen
Lock - xlock, etc.
Save - screen savers
Root-window - things that fill the root window
WindowManagers - X window managers
Modules - window manager modules
XShells - shells (like xterm, rxvt, ...)
For users wanting to access some menu entries quickly, you can also put entries in the root menu. This is done by using section="/". Package provided menu entries must never use this feature.
The command field holds the command that should be executed when the menu entry
is selected. Commands will be executed with sh -c using
execl("/bin/sh","sh","-c",command)
or the equivalent.
Please, make sure the icons you specify are always available on the system.
So, if you want to have an icon with your menu entry, the preferred method is
to supply the icon with that package. Also, to prevent the distribution of
icons files to turn too much into a mess, please put all icon files in the
directory /usr/share/pixmaps.
Debian package maintainers should ensure that any icons they include for use in the Debian menus conform to the following points:
The icons should be in xpm format.
The icons may not be larger than 32x32 pixels, although smaller sizes are ok.
The background area of the icon should be transparent, if possible.
You can provide both 16x16 and 32x32 pixels icons using the variables icon16x16 and icon32x32 so that the user can configure menu to use one or the other.
If you, as a system administrator, don't like the icons in the menus, simply
change the icon() function from the file
/etc/menu-methods/menu.h, and run update-menus.
Hints are used to help menu structure generated menus in a more optimal way. For example:
?package(emacs20):\
needs="x11"\
hints="Big,Expert,Featureful" \
section="Apps/Editors"\
title="Emacs 20"\
command="/usr/bin/emacs20"\
icon=/usr/share/emacs/20.3/etc/emacs.xbm
The above hints will case menu to consider grouping
emacs together with other editors that are marked similar. For
example, if vi on your system has a hints="Small,Expert"
definition, and there are too many entries in the /Apps/Editors menuentry, then
menu will consider creating a /Apps/Editors/Expert submenu, and put both
vi and emacs in it. (of course, only if you have
hint_optimize=true in your /etc/menu-methods/menu.h
file).
It is possible to add entries for menu sections, but it is not mandatory since section entries are created automatically. However, this allows to specify fields for sections like icon and sort. The syntax for menu sections entries is the same as for regular entries, the section field holding the name of the parent section. For example
?package(local.games): needs="text" title="Games" section="/" sort="001"
will sort Games first.
The problem with the stuff in the task bar is that all items are displayed all
of the time. So, if 1500 Debian packages all were to register a button, the
buttons would quickly fill the screen, making the exercise useless. The few
applications that are considered important enough to be listed in the task bar
usually vary widely on each system, making it impossible to select a ``happy
few'' apps that are allowed there on every Debian system. If you (as a local
system administrator) want your fvwm2 to have a few buttons, you
can install files for those packages in /menu/$package, containing
a menu entry like this:
?Package(xmball):needs=button\
section=Games/Puzzles\
icon=path-to-pixmap.xpm\
title="Xmball"\
command=/usr/games/xmball
Then, do the following:
cd /etc/menu-methods/
cp fvwm2 fvwm2button
vi fvwm2button
and remove all the "supported" entries, adding the one below. For the rest, leave everything the same except those listed below.
supported
button="+ Style \"" $title "\" TitleIcon" $icon " Exec " $command "\n"
endsupported
startmenu: "AddToTitlebar \n"
endmenu: "\n"
submenutitle:""
mainmenu:
genmenu: "buttondefs.hook"
(Of course regular users (not system administrators) can also specify `buttonfiles' in their ~/.menu/ directory).
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A package should provide a menu file
/usr/share/menu/<package-name> that contains information
about each program it likes to make available in the menus.
You should add a line like this to your postinst script
if test -x /usr/bin/update-menus; then update-menus; fi
and the postrm script should get the line
if test -x /usr/bin/update-menus; then update-menus; fi
(that is, the same line in postinst and in postrm).
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Each package containing a menu manager (i.e. a program that can
display a menu) should provide a script or program in
/etc/menu-methods/ that can read the menu files. This script will
be executed by update-menus, which will feed the menu entries to
be installed to your script via standard input (stdin).
The scripts in /etc/menu-methods/ should be configuration files,
so the user can tune the behaviour of the script, and they must always include
the /etc/menu-methods/menu.h configuration file at the beginning
with the command !include menu.h For the same reason, scripts in
/etc/menu-methods/ are requested to use the following configurable
functions: title() for the title (in place of
$title), icon() for the icon (in place of
$icon), term() for running text command
under X11. sections_translations() for the list of
translations of sections name available. This later one is only defined if you
!include lang.h
Good examples for these scripts for nearly all Debian window managers are
included in the menu package in
/usr/share/doc/menu/examples. Note that while working on your
script, you can use the tricks described in "The internals of the menu
package", section "The update-menus program", to run just your
script, instead of having update-menus run all scripts (can save quite a lot of
time).
This script should not be executable in the package. Instead the
postinst should add the execute bit and then run
update-menus (if it is executable).
Similarly, the postrm script when called with option ``remove''
should remove the execute bit and run update-menus (if it is
executable).
Here is an example of such a postrm script using sh:
#!/bin/sh
set -e
inst=/etc/menu-methods/#PACKAGE#
case "$1" in
remove)
if [ -f $inst ]; then
chmod a-x $inst
if [ -x /usr/bin/update-menus ]; then update-menus ; fi
fi
;;
purge)
#remove the files that install-menu creates:
(cd /etc/X11/twm/; rm system.twmrc menus.dat menudefs.hook)
;;
upgrade);;
*)
echo "postrm called with unknown argument \`$1'" >&2
exit 0
;;
esac
And here is a good example for a postinst script:
#!/bin/sh
set -e
inst=/etc/menu-methods/#PACKAGE#
if [ -f $inst ]; then
chmod a+x $inst
if [ -x /usr/bin/update-menus ]; then
update-menus
fi
fi
Note:
Previous version of menu were advertising the script
/usr/sbin/wm-menu-config. There was a flaw: this script was only
available when menu is installed and so the menu-method script was not
executable if menu was installed afterward.
This script is considered deprecated, please don't use it anymore.
Please, do not make your package depend on the menu package! The preferred way of telling dpkg that your wm can cooperate with menu is:
Suggests: menu
Please only consider using "depends" if you feel providing reasonable defaults for systems without menu will make life very difficult for you.
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Users can specify their own menu entries in the ~/.menu directory.
The files can have an arbitrary file name as long as the new syntax for the
menu entries is used. They should start with either
?package(installed-package):
or
?package(local.mystuff):
if it's something that isn't ``debian-officially'' installed. (Any ``package'' that starts with ``local.'' is considered installed.)
If a user wants to have his/her own menu methods, he/she should create a
~/.menu-methods directory and put all scripts he/she wants to be
run in it. (If ~/.menu-methods exists,
/etc/menu-methods will not be searched when a user runs
update-menus).
A system administrator should place system-wide menu entries in
/etc/menu (not in /usr/share/menu/package, since
these files will probably be overwritten by a package upgrade).
If a user wants to remove the entries of package from the system menu then this will do the trick:
echo -n > ~/.menu/package
The zero-size file will tell update-menus that the corresponding
package should not have any menu entries listed. A system administrator can
remove menu entries system-wide with
echo -n > /etc/menu/package
Historical comment by Joost:
More out of curiosity than anything else, I recently read the KDE mailing list. In it I saw some discussion about how good the Debian menu system is (whow, thanks, guys!), but one person found a missing feature: s/he said you couldn't include other files in the user menu files. Well, actually, it was already possible, but not very well documented.
To include the contents of the file /usr/share/menu/somefile, add
this to your menu file:
!include /usr/share/menu/somefile
Apart from that, it is of course possible to make the menu entry file executable (chmod a+x ~/.menu/package), and do something like
#!/bin/sh
cat /usr/share/menu/somefile
sed -e "/unwanted_entry/s/?package(/?package(notinstalled./" \
/usr/share/menu/someotherfile
to get the same effect, with the added flexibility of being able to filter out unwanted lines.
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On startup, update-menus checks the file /var/run/update-menus.pid
and the pid in it. If there's an update-menus process with that
pid it kills it. If /var/lib/dpkg/lock exists, it forks to
background and returns control to dpkg. The background process checks the
/var/lib/dpkg/lock file approx. every second until the file's
gone.
After that, update-menus reads the menu-entry-files in the
following directories: /etc/menu, /usr/lib/menu,
/usr/share/menu, /usr/share/menu/default. (if a user
runs update-menus, it will add ~/.menu to the front
of that list). For every menu entry line in each file it checks if the
corresponding package is installed (works on file bases for old syntax menu
entry files). The menu entries of all "installed" packages are added
together in one big buffer that is kept in memory (exception: executable menu
entry files are executed, and stdout is placed in the buffer).
Once it's read all menu entry files, update-menus starts all
executable scripts in /etc/menu-methods/, hands the scripts the
previously created buffer via stdin. (If update-menus is ran by a
user, it will first try to run the scripts in ~/.menu-methods, and
only if that directory doesn't exist, it will run the scripts in
/etc/menu-methods).
Note that as an aid to debugging, one can use
update-menus --stdout > /tmp/menu-stdin
and then view the file /tmp/menu-stdin to see exactly what
update-menus handed the menu-methods on their stdin.
This may also be useful for people writing /etc/menu-method/*
scripts: Running update-menus every time you changed something in
the script may be quite time-consuming. So, it's much easier to run
update-menus --stdout once, and then run
/etc/menu-methods/mymethod < /tmp/menu-stdin
(and, if that also takes too long, just try editing /tmp/menu-stdin, and removing 90% or so of all entries)
The files /etc/menu-methods/$wm are executable config files that
start with the line
#!/usr/bin/install-menu
and thus start that program, handing it the configuration file for the specific window manager in the first command line argument. This configuration consists of:
the compatibility mode ("menu-1" or "menu-2").
where the various files should be stored/read.
what "needs" are supported, and what wrapper files should be used for each "type".
See /usr/share/doc/menu/examples/ of the menu package for more
comments.
Options to install-menu:
-v be verbose
-d Produce loads of debugging output
Some window managers don't support an `include' like statement in their
system.*rc files (like m4 or cpp
preprocessing), they cannot read the menudefs.hook file generated
by install-menu from their system.*rc config file. To still be
able to use them, install-menu will copy the file
$path/$examplercfile to $path/$rcfile (with
$examplercfile and $rcfile defined in the
install-menu config file, and $path either the
$rootprefix or ${HOME}/$userprefix, depending on
whether root or user executed the file.), and replace all occurrences of
``install-menu-defs'' with the $genmenu file it just generated.
As an example, consider the following:
examplercfile=system.foo-wm-example,
rcfile=system.foo-wm, genmenu=menudefs.hook and
rootprefix=/etc/X11/foo-wm. Now, if install-menu
gets run, it will first generate the file
/etc/X11/foo-wm/menudefs.hook. Next, it will line-by-line read
the file /etc/X11/foo-wm/system.foo-wm-example and copy it's
contents to /etc/X11/foo-wm/system.foo-wm, replacing every
occurrence of the string install-menu-defs by the contents of the
file /etc/X11/foo-wm/menudefs.hook.
To activate the file copying in this way, simply define the
$examplercfile and $rcfile variables in the
install-menu configuration file (for example, see
/etc/menu-methods/fvwm), and make sure there is a
$path/$examplercfile ($path being either
$rootprefix, or $userprefix.)
If you are writing a menu method, you can use the following to make debugging it somewhat easier:
use update-menus --stdout > /tmp/menu-stdin to create a list of
menu entries in /tmp/menu-stdin and then
you can run just your menu-method with (if it's called wm):
./wm -v < /tmp/menu-stdin
(Use -v for verbose, -d for debugging, and you'll get loads of output!)
The menu-methods in /etc/menu-methods/* are basically made up of a
lot of ``tag=string'' definitions, explaining install-menu how to
generate a system.$wmrc script. This way you can tune the look of
generated system.$wmrc to your needs.
In the following, something like
treewalk="c(m)"
means that the treewalk variable by default has the value "c(m)".
For examples of what these scripts can look like, see
/usr/share/doc/menu/examples/*.
Two mode are defined:
menu directives are terminated by an end-of-line character.
menu directives are terminated by semi-comma character.
This must be just after the !include "menu.h" directive
so that menu.h can use its own compat mode.
Set the encoding used for output files. Use iconv --list to get the list of supported encoding. Useful values include "UTF-8" and "ISO-8859-1". The special value "LOCALE" means that the current locale encoding will be used. If set to an empty string, no translations are performed. This is the default.
If set to "C" automatic translations will be disabled. Note that you can still use translate() to perform explicit translation.
Between the supported and endsupported keywords you define what "needs" are supported by this window manager. So, the following is an example for a wm that supports both needs=x11 and needs=text:
function q($s) = "\"" esc($s,"\\\"") "\""
supported
x11 =" ShowEntry(" q(title()) ", " q($command) ")"
text=" ShowEntry(" q(title()) ", " q(term()) ")"
endsupported
For the variable substitution (and functions, not shown above), see the next paragraph. In the above example, you'll notice that for the menu entries that "need=text", the term() function is used. This is an user-supplied function that will run $command in a X terminal emulator. Also, as x11 is higher up in the supported list above than text, a package that supplies both a "needs=x11" and a "needs=text" entry will have the needs=x11 entry installed, in favour of the needs=text entry. You can continue lines on the next line with a \, but do make sure you don't add any spaces after the \.
These define what to print for the beginning/end of a menu, and how to the print a menu entry that pops up another menu entry. They are substituted the same way as the "supported" stuff is. (see next paragraph).
This string defines in what order to dump the $startmenu, $endmenu, and $submenutitle (and its children). Each char in the string refers to:
c : dump children of menu.
m : dump this menu's $submenutitles
( : dump $startmenu
) : dump $endmenu
M : dump all $submenutitles of this menu and this menu's children.
The default is "c(m)". For olvwm, one needs: "(M)"
The menu file to generate (usually something like system."$wm"rc). The file itself may depend on the level or title that is currently being worked on, like
genmenu="/subdir/" replacewith($section," ","_") "/rc.menu"
(Substitution works just like in the supported stuff, see above). Note that the files made this way are truncated upon opening, so if you have a genmenu like the example above, then your endmenu= will override the startmenu stuff (but you probably only need one of the two anyway).
the prefix, every $section variable gets.
The commands to run before resp. after the actual generation of the
menudefs.hook (genmenu) file. Commands will be executed by
sh. Example:
prerun="rm -rf " prefix() "/*"
postrun="killall -USR1 fvwm2"
(Substitution works just like the supported stuff, see below).
Just like prerun, but if the return value of the command is non-zero, menu will quit.
If non-zero, install-menus will, after generating the output files, also load the file also_run, and use the new assignments to treewalk, genmenu, etc to generate more output. This second time, variables like prerun and all of the hint stuff are ignored.
Note: NOT just like prerun etc: prerun etc start a command with /bin/sh, also_run doesn't exec any other command, just tells install-menu to also load another binary, and generate the output.
If onlyrunasroot is set to true, menu will quit silently when run as user. Similarly for onlyrunasuser. onlyrunasroot is deprecated since it is simpler to just not define userprefix. On the other hand, onlyrunasuser might be needed if you use rcfile since rootprefix is used as a fallback location for the template.
Text to put at the beginning resp. end of the generated file ($genmenu).
A command to run instead of install-menus. This command used to
be needed to get around limitations due to compatibility stuff. But that
compatibility with pre menu-1 stuff has been dropped, and isn't needed any
more.
Example:
command="cat > /tmp/menu-stdin"
Keys not to use for hotkey generation. You can use the same variables and functions here as in for example the startmenu sections.
Example:
hotkeyexclude="q" $section
can be either "insensitive" or "sensitive". Determines whether the hotkeys can be of mixed case (fvwm2 reads the hotkeys case-insensitive, pdmenu case-sensitive). In case of the titles "Xa" and "xb", hotkey case-insensitive will generate "X" and "b", whereas case-sensitive would generate "X" and "x".
Entries within one menu will be alphabetically sorted by whatever sort returns. So, if you do sort=ifelse($command, "1", "0"):$title, then all submenus will appear above the commands in a submenu. (A submenu always has $command=""). Or, as Joey Hess writes:
You can add another field to the menu items, with whatever name you like,
let's say it's called priority. Then add this line to
/etc/menu-methods/*:
sort=ifelse($priority, $priority, "9")
This has the result of sorting things so items with a low priority sort to the
top, and items with no priority default to priority 9 and sort to the bottom.
(Note that it compares the strings alphabetically, not numerically.)
If the window manager doesn't support an "include filename" or "read(filename)" statement in it's config file, you can rename the wm's config file to system."$wm"rc-menu, and insert a "install-menu-defs" line (without the quotes, or whitespace around it, and "install-menu-defs" must be the only thing on the line) in the system."$wm"rc-menu file. This will then get replaced by the $genmenu file that was just created (see also $examplercfile).
if needed (see rcfile), this is the system.rc"$wm"-menu file. In that case, make rcfile=system.rc"$wm".
The prefix to use when running as root (applies to $genmenu, $rcfile, $examplercfile and other old cache files). If it is not defined, the menu-method will be skipped when run as root.
As rootprefix, but when running as user. userprefix is relative to the user home directory, unless it start with 2 slashes, in which case it is treated as an absolute path. If it is not defined, the menu-method will be skipped when run as a user.
If set to true, menu will try to generate an `optimal' tree, using the variables below. If set to false, menu will keep the sections as they are specified in the menu entry files (and ignore any hint stuff).
Optimal number of entries in a submenu. It's a float, so you can set it to 5.5 if you cannot decide between 5 and 6. Also, values less than 3 probably don't work very well at the moment.
Same as hint_nentry, but for the top level menu. Often here are other entries, added by the window-manager itself (like Exit, Xterm, whatever) that menu doesn't know about, so that you may want to instruct menu to put less entries in the top level menu.
Penalty for `mixed' menus. Mixed menus are those with both submenus and direct commands in them.
Minimal relative frequency for the hints before they are considered. Internal variable to speed up the tree generation. If you find menu slow, increase this value (to, say 0.2 or 0.3).
`max local penalty', while evaluating the possible trees, menu gives `penalties' for submenus that don't contain the desired number of submenus. The penalty is sqrt(n_entry_opt-n_entry), and eventually will be calculated as a sum of all nodes. But to speed things up, menu will discard possibilities in which any node has a `local' penalty of more than hint_mlpenalty. Increase this value if you think menu is overlooking your favorite tree (also decrease minhintfreq), decrease this value if you think menu is wasting too much time. Because of hint_max_ntry, the influence of this variable is nearly zero nowadays.
menu will recursively, for each node, try the hint_max_ntry best local menu-divisions.
The search for what hints to use in one menu is rather expensive. But due to the way things are sorted, menu seems to always find the `best' match in the first 2% of iterations. Thus, a way to speedup things is simply to cut of menu searching after `some' iterations are done. This value controls this, and limits the number of iterations to 5+hint_max_iter_hint*number_of_possible_hints. Set this value to negative to disable this.
Set to true if you want to see loads and loads of debug output.
The hints actually work in a rather strange way: when hint_optimize=true then all $section elements are added to the specified $hints variable, and the order (/Apps/Editors or /Editors/Apps) of the resulting hints is completely ignored. Then, the hints for each menu entry are handed to the optimization routine, that will calculate a reasonable tree for those hints. That tree must comply with the following:
When a user looks for a program "Program" with, say, hints "Good,Bulky,Heaven", then, while walking through the tree, it should at every node visited be clear for the user what submenu to select (or the menu should have "Program" directly in it). So, the toplevel menu may look like
Good
Hell
Microsoft
because then a searcher for a menu entry with hints "Good,Bulky,Heaven" will know to select the submenu "Good". The toplevel menu may not look like
Good
Hell
Heaven
as now it isn't clear whether to visit the Good or the Heaven submenu.
That rule allows usually for many different trees, and the task of the optimization procedure is to select, in a finite amount of time, the tree that best matches the user's desire about the optimum number of menu entries.
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The supported "needs" definitions and "startmenu=", "endmenu=" and "submenutitle=" are interpreted as follows:
Anything inside double quotes ("") is interpreted as a string, and is written verbatim to the output file. Stuff like \n, \t, ... will be substituted for their C expansions (But not \0xx, currently).
Anything matching $[a-z,A-Z,_]* is interpreted as a variable, and the corresponding definition from the menu entry is substituted.
The following variables are treated in a special way by install-menus, either because they are used for other purposes too, or because they are modified by install-menus (the ones marked with a "!" are modified by install-menus).
Used to determine whether the window manager supports this menu entry.
If this is undefined, this menu entry is taken as defining a sub-menu. (this way you can specify icons of sub-menus).
Used for sorting (see section). For sub-menu entries (those with empty command), this is initialised to the last part of the section. Please, keep the title short (two words at maximum). The title is for people who already know what programme they want to start. See "longtitle" and "description" below for longer descriptions.
Used for sorting (see section). To make sure an entry is at the beginning, use something with a low ASCII number, like "$". For sorting at the end, use "|"
Used to determine the section of the menu entry. The menu entries that have a empty $command, ie those that define a submenu, have $title added to the end of $section The menu entries that have a non-empty $command have their $section modified to $section/$title, or $section/$sort:$title if $sort is defined. The menu entries within one submenu are sorted according to $section. If you want to retrieve the real section name, see the $basesection variable.
Used to contain the *real* section name. This is useful because $section will be changed to $section/$title in special cases (see above). This causes a problem when you want to do parent($section) because you won't get the real parent section. Instead you can use $basesection, which will never contain the title.
Modified to reflect what install-menus thinks is the most suitable hotkey for this menu entry. The hotkey= in the menu entry file is taken as a suggestion, that could be overwritten if there is another entry with the same hotkey=. To suggest two possible hotkeys for an entry use hotkey="ab", with "a" being the most preferred hotkey.
The following aren't special for install-menus, but it's nice (read: essential) to use the same variables for the same things. So, I'll suggest some here. If you want to invent new ones, please do so and mail them to me so that I can include them here.
The location of the icon file for this menu entry. If you don't have an icon file, just leave out the icon= in the menu entry.
The location of a 32x32 icon file for this menu entry.
The location of a 16x16 icon file for this menu entry. This allows users to choose between 16x16 and 32x32 icon.
For people that like descriptive titles (about one line) It is probably best to include this in your menu entries, while the window-managers don't (by default) put it in the menus. That way, people who want descriptive titles can turn them on, but others don't need to use them.
An even longer description (about 5 lines). For example, a description of the documentation in the dwww generated html pages.
The following variables probably shouldn't appear often (or at all) in the menu files supplied with packages. They are mostly intended for use by local system managers. Nevertheless, it is advised that all Debian systems use the following variable names:
Some apps add entries to utmp the utmp file, so that "who" and friends know they are running (this is especially true for xterms etc). If $visible set (to anything other than "" or "none"), xterms etc will not write logging info to utmp. (may not work for your window manager).
For X apps, this will be the size of the (main) window that will be created (units in either chars or pixels, depending on type of main window (xterm or graphic)). If you as package maintainer want to use this, you should probably think about setting this variable somewhere in an Xresources file.
Anything matching [a-z,A-Z,_] is taken as a function (and an error is generated if the function doesn't exist). The arguments of the functions can be other functions, string constants or variables.
returns the current prefix dir: either $rootprefix, or $HOME/$userprefix, depending on who runs install-menu
if(getuid()==0) print $rootarg, else print $userarg
Same as just $arg; if $arg is empty, generate an error.
write $string $n times. So, nstring(3,"Aa") writes "AaAaAa". (Useful in combination with level()).
Print $arg1, but escape all occurrences of characters in $arg2 with a '\' (thus, if arg1="hello", arg2="lo", print "he\l\l\o").
Same as esc, but use $arg3 as escape sequence.
Same as escwith, but only escapes first occurrence of $arg2.
Escape anything that isn't a letter, number or _ with $<hex-ascii-code>. So, for example, a '-' is replaced by '$2D'. This way, $arg1 can be used as a #define in cpp.
Returns the argument set in lowercases resp uppercases.
Search $s for occurrences of characters from string replace, and replace them by the corresponding character in $with. Example: replacewith("hello $world, %dir", "$% ", "123") returns: "hello31world,32dir"
Search $s for occurences of $replace and replace them with $with. Note that the behaviour of this function is quite different than the replacewith() function.
If $arg1 is empty, print $arg2, otherwise print nothing. For compatibility, $arg1="none" is interpreted as empty.
If $arg1 is not empty, print $arg2. For compatibility, the string "none" is seen as empty.
If $arg1 is non-empty, print $arg2, otherwise $arg3. For compatibility, the string "none" is seen as empty.
If ($arg1==$arg2) then print $arg3
If ($arg1!=$arg2) then print $arg3
If ($arg1==$arg2) then print $arg3 else print $arg4
If $arg1 is non-empty print $arg2$arg1$arg3, otherwise print nothing. For compatibility, $arg1="none" is interpreted as empty.
If file $arg1 exists, and can be opened for reading by whoever started the current process, return $arg2, otherwise return nothing.
If file $arg1 exists, and can be opened for reading by whoever started the current process, return $arg2, otherwise return $arg3.
Return the contents of file $arg1.
Return the output of the shell command $arg1.
For each element of the column separated array $array, set $var to that element, and print $exec. Example:
!include lang.h
forall(sections_translations(), "lang", \
" section[" $lang "]=" translate($lang, title()) "\n")
for $arg a "directory", return parent directory: parent("/Debian/Apps/Editors") = "/Debian/Apps".
return the last part of the parent directory: basename("/Debian/Apps/Editors") = "Apps".
everything after the last slash, i.e. what basename() should have returned: stripdir("/Debian/Apps/Editors") = "Editors".
the number of entries in this menu.
returns relative position of this entry. Start with 0, last entry is entrycount() - 1. BUG: if sort= anything other than $title, then this entryindex() will return incorrect values.
return $arg if this is the first entry of this menu (that is, entryindex() = 0). Else, return nothing.
return $arg if this is the last entry in this menu (that is, entryindex() = entrycount() -1). Else, return nothing.
return nesting of this menu in the total menu tree.
returns the sum, difference, product or quotient of $arg1 and $arg2. Note that the arguments are strings, that are converted to integers. example: mult("24", entryindex())
These functions all output whatever they were defined to be in the menu-method file.
Translate $text into $lang using gettext, see forall for an example. Note that currently outputlanguage must be set to "C". If $lang is the empty string, $text will be translated in the current locale language. See sections_translations() for a list of available translations.
String constants, variables and functions can be concatenated by placing them after each other with a space in between, like: "hello" ifelse($comma, $comma, " sorry" $period " comma not defined") " world"
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Debian Menu System
version 1.4, 20 October 2005joostje@debian.orgjoeyh@debian.orgschwarz@debian.orgballombe@debian.org