[Panel-devel] application menu and "utilities"

[Florian Merz]

> > > - kregexpeditor - edit regular expressions
> > > move to extragear, though it's fine in the utilities menu
> >
> > and if someone installs it from extragear? how do we show it in the
> > kmenu?
>
> nooooooooo... kregexpeditor is sooo useful to newbies...
> If they need to create a regular expression for whatever reason,
> kregexpeditor is a really powerful gui that helps to do so.

You got any examples for those reasons?

And please don't forget that putting it in extragear is not the same as 
dropping it. I don't think a user who can't install packages with his 
distributions package manager will need regular expression.

> [snip]
>
> >> It seems to me like there is no need to create a new menu/place/thing
> >> to hold and manage these utilities. Most of them showed up in the
> >> utilities menu because programmers didn't realize the right way to do
> >> it or the right way just didn't exist when the program was created.
>
> Please, if you want to remove functionality just for the sake of
> simplicity, just use gnome, they've already did :P

Nothing in the sentence you quoted says anything about removing 
functionality. All I'm saying is I don't think it's a good idea to 
introduce another place to organize utilities. I think it would be better 
to decide for each utility what to do with it individually instead of 
creating a new hierarchy , menu or dialog and just put all the utilities in 
there.
Keep the utilities menu but reduce its size so the most important utilities 
can be found easily.

> My thought?
> Just keep the utilities menu, and split it into several, defined, and
> smart categories, but not like we already do with kmenu submenus (like
> office, or graphics, or so), but _REALLY_ trying to represent what the
> user wants to do when (s)he use them. We can also create more, and
> non-standard categories, and be more "liberal" managing them.
>
> Just try not to answer the question "What use is my app designed for?"
> (office, development, etc..) but more "When users needs to use my app?"
> (E.g. when (s)he will use kjobviewer, is because is trying to "debug"
> some kind of hardwawre problems). So put it in some submenu of the
> "Utilities" submenu called "harware issues" or something.

IMHO KDE shouldn't add more depth to the utilities menu but reduce its size.

> And _avoid_ a "Various"category in that submenu.

Mmh, right now the utilities menu feels already a bit like a "Various" 
category.

> -Riccardo

Just my two cents,
 Florian