www.fifi.org
    Documentation
        Manpages
        GNU Info
        Debian document tree
        Whole document tree
    Trigance web page
    Public services
    User info
    Mailing lists
    Secure server
    Multilingual usage

Manpages

Manpage of MENUFILE

MENUFILE

Section: Misc. Reference Manual Pages (5L)
Updated: File Formats
Index
Return to Main Contents

NAME

menufile - entry in the Debian menu system

SYNOPSIS

~/.menu/*

/etc/menu/*

/usr/lib/menu/*

/usr/lib/menu/default/*

DESCRIPTION

Menu files add entries to the Debian menu system. The system administrator can place menu files in /etc/menu/ to override menu files that packages add to /usr/lib/menu/ . The user can place menu files in ~/.menu/ to override all other menu files.

This man page may be out of date in some places. Look at /usr/doc/menu/html for more up-to-date info.

The menu files are usually named after the Debian package that contains the programs listed in them. In it, you can list several "menuentries", that specify a specific item in the menu "menu entries", that specify a specific item in the menu structure. Each menu entry specifies what package it depends on, if that package is not installed, the menu entry will be ignored by update-menus(1). (In a menu entry you can specify pseudo-packages that start with "local.", update-menus will always use those menu entries). If you wish to remove an item from the menu entirely, make an empty menu file with the same name as the file you want to override.

Examples

Dosemu could install the following menu file as /usr/lib/menu/dosemu:

?package(dosemu):needs=text section=Apps/Emulators title="Dosemu" command=dosemu
?package(dosemu):needs=x11 section=Apps/Emulators title="Dosemu" command=xdos

The system administrator wants to override this file to change how dosemu is run, so /etc/menu/dosemu is created:

?package(dosemu):needs=text section=Apps/Emulators title="Dosemu" command="dosemu -A"
?package(dosemu):needs=x11 section=Apps/Emulators title="Dosemu" command="xdos -A"

A user does not want Dosemu to appear on his menus at all, so he creates an empty file named ~/.menu/dosemu .

FORMAT

A menu file consists of 0 or more lines of the following format:

?package(package-name):var1=value var2=varlue2 ...

needs=

What type of display will the program run on? This variable must be defined, and should be one of the following:

needs=text: any text display
needs=x11: X11 displays
needs=vc: At the Linux console (i.e.: svgalib programs)
needs=wm: A window manager.
needs=fvwmmodule: A fvwm version 1.x compatible module.
needs=fvwm2module: A fvwm version 2.x compatible module.

section

The section in which the menu entry should appear. See MENU LAYOUT for preferred section names.

icon

An icon for this menu entry. If no icon is available, just don't define this. (icon="none" is also possible, preferably just leave it out)

title

The title of the program that will appear on the menus. Keep it short. If two menu entries share the same title and section, the one that bests fits the available display will be used. So in the example above with two menu entries that both have the menu id "title", if X is available, the x11 one will be used, otherwise the text one will be used. Must be defined.

command

The command to be executed when this menu entry is selected.

MENU LAYOUT

This is the preferred layout of the menus. Currently it is a suggestion only. Use `/' to separate sub-menu names, for example, "Apps/Editors" or "Games/Arcade".

Apps            -- all normal apps
   Editors       -- editors
   Emulators     -- Dosemu, ...
   Graphics      -- xpaint, xfig, xtiff,
   Math          -- Math apps: gnuplot, octave, oleo,..
   Net           -- mail, news, web, irc, etc
   Programming   -- debuggers, etc
   Shells        -- Different shells, like bash, zsh, ...
   Sound         --
   System        -- system administration and monitoring
   Tools         -- other tools: xclock, xmag, xman,
   Viewers       -- Picture viewers, gs, ...
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, ...
   Sports        -- Games derived from "real world" sports
   Tetris-like   -- games involving falling blocks
   Toys          -- (oneko, xeyes, etc.)
Screen          --
   Lock          -- xlock, etc.
   Screen-saver  --
   Root-window   -- things that fill the root window
Window-managers -- (change between fvwm, afterstep, etc)
   Modules       -- fvwm modules, etc.
XShells         -- shells (like xterm, rxvt, ...)

NOTES

If you want to specify an icon or hotkey for a sub-menu (for example, the Editors sub-menu), just use the same syntax but leave the command empty:

?package(mypackage):needs=X11 section=Apps icon=icon.xpm hotkey=E title="Editors"

Whenever any menu files are changed, you must run update-menus(1)

FILES

(Earlier listed files override later files with the same names.)

~/.menus/*

: Menu files added by the user.