[LAD] [Maybe OT] Linux Audio Apps Clasification

Ralf Mardorf ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net
Fri Nov 6 10:41:15 UTC 2009


Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 3, 2009, Daniel Vidal wrote:
>   
>>    I'am now working on making personalized menus for Musix distro. I try to
>> do this task using the freedesktop rules, using .desktop files and the
>> "Categories" field. This is a real problem. All audio Apps put "AudioVideo"
>> tag... and all apps apear together on a single menu option... Mixers merged
>> with synths... with DAWs... with virtual keyboards... Well... when the user
>> chooses the "multimedia" option of system menu... the submenu have three
>> columns of apps... Only a little set of apps put more specific tag like
>> "Midi" or "Synthesis"...
>>     
>
> I would strongly recommend to adhere to the published standards:
>
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html
>
> If there is a real need for more registered categories, the way to go is to 
> propose the new categories to be included in future releases of the standard.
>
> Some of your proposed additional categories correspond to registered ones:
>
>   
>>    AudioPlayer
>>     
>
> Player; Audio or Video or AudioVideo
>
>   
>>    Mixer
>>     
>
> Mixer;AudioVideo;Audio;
>
>   
>>    WaveEditor
>>    ScoreEditor
>>     
>
> AudioVideoEditing; Audio or Video or AudioVideo
>
> There are other already existing categories:
>
> Midi;AudioVideo;Audio;
> Sequencer;AudioVideo;Audio
> Recorder; Audio or Video or AudioVideo
> Music; AudioVideo or Education
>
> Regards,
> Pedro

For a user it's more comfortable to have one menu for all entries 
instead of having sub-menus that aren't fine. Just install openSUSE 11.2 
RC 1. They added sub menus, thus means that if you compile Qtractor from 
svn, it will be found in the sub-menu "video" ;). For users who like to 
use menus for hook or by crook will be the need to edit the menu for 
each desktop environment separately (nearly impossible because of 
freedesktop). In addition even a rubric "Synth" might need sub-menus, 
e.g. for the 1000 entries of bristol. Does freedesktop specifications 
work for anybody? I can remember that I once had several wastebins on my 
desktop ;), that there are always strange side effects when editing 
menus, while using more than one desktop environment. The interlacing 
between different desktop environments only causes trouble. It would be 
much more comfortable if each WM/DE would use it's own files. Btw. I 
guess most Linux audio users will start most applications by using a 
terminal instead of a menu.

It's the only mail I read of this thread, but sorry, anyway I need to 
reply, because the standards of freedesktop very often cause trouble on 
my machines, e.g. when using GNOME and KDE and editing the menus, e.g. 
by using Alacarte.

:)
Ralf



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