how to show menus as menus in the application laucher of the panel?

[hw]

On Sun, 2022-02-27 at 08:24 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> hw posted on Sun, 27 Feb 2022 02:22:54 +0100 as excerpted:
> 
> > how do you make it so that menus in the starter of the panel show as
> > menus as they used to?  I thought the menu definitions must have become
> > messed up but kmenuedit still shows them as menus as they are supposed
> > to show.  I added my own menus and submenus, and of course I want them
> > to show as menus and submenus and not everything in a chaotic list. 
> > Somehow the panel/starter must have been made worse.
> 
> Easiest:  Context (aka right) click on the kickoff button and select "show 
> alternatives".  Select "Application Menu".  (This of course assumes your 
> distro has it installed.)

Right click doesn't work with wayland.

> Alternative: Add widgets (there's several ways to get to that, including 
> the desktop context menu), set the category to application launchers, make 
> your selection and drag it to a panel or desktop as desired.

You mean the root window ("background" since wayland apparently doesn't have
a root window anymore)?  The background is covered with windows, so that menu
is not accessible.  And I don't understand what you mean by "desktop".  A
GUI is no more than a way to display programs in such a way that they can be
had on the same display with convenient ways to switch between them.  A
"background" basically doesn't exist, and there is no "desktop".  I don't
understand what "desktop environment" is supposed to be, either, there is
no such thing.

Remember when we switched between consoles with Alt+Fx keys.  A GUI is no
more than that, only more convenient for switching and with more possibilites
for displaying graphics.  And the key bindings in emacs work better in GUI
frames.

> Third party alternative:  Choose and configure your own third-party 
> launcher.

Like which one?

> [...]
> After trying a few different things including a heavily bash-scripted 
> solution of my own, I ended up using pdmenu as my base,
> [...]

Hm, pdmenu isn't in Fedora.  Maybe mc might work?  Maybe I need to go back
to fvwm --- but then I'd be stuck with X11.