Getting fully customized

[Mahngiel]

I've done just about everything I would like to do (for the moment) in customizing my Ubuntu. The only think left that I've yet to be able to break into is that danged Menu Bar.
http://i806.photobucket.com/albums/yy341/mahngiel/menubar.png

I've cracked into both the user-defined and system-wide .menus (/.config/menus/* & /etc/xdg/menus) and tried hacking a bit. I was disappointed that I only found Applications.menu and System.menu, but no Places.menu. Anyhow, I was able to make new submenus within the 'The Big 3' (Applications, Places, & System), but you can do that from the Edit Menu module. I even made my own .menu, but it wouldn't pick it up.

I want to fully customize this menu bar, from changing the names of 'The Big 3' to adding new menus. I've searched for a HowTo on this topic, but the only thing I find are people having issues editing the apps/folders inside. Not that I really want a HowTo, but really, I just want to find the home of this thing.

It has to be accessible, since themes and languages are updated by it. So, anybody know where it lives?

I know many people would be interested in this, so if we have to, let's hack this together for the benefit of the entire community.

--Thanks.

[Mahngiel]

perhaps this post is in the wrong thread. maybe if i could get some moderator's attention, or that of a developer, they would be more inclined to spill the details. however, if i recreated the thread, it would be closed due to double-post rules... so, my only hope is that it gains some traction and attention. How about if i added a poll if you would like the ability to change the default gnome menu bar, and would like a howto to be posted?

please comment freely.

[Mahngiel]

Update: After speaking with a developer I found it is an applet and controlled by the parent 'gnome-menus'.

I'm not a professional by any means, but I think it's hackable. I'll be working on it simple due to it being a challenge. I suppose I'll post updates or progress here... ?

Interestingly enough, I was told last night in #ubuntu-motu that "gnome is a dead project". Leads me to be curious if the new lucid is supposed to be an entire DE like E17?

[Mahngiel]

I happened across this today, not exactly sure how I found it, and is a fully designed applet to replace the standard gnome-menu-applet panel.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=365147l

Check this out, it's really cool!