How to edit/add Menu items of Maverick Meerkat Unity Desktop??

[LinkMJB]

Hey Rocket,

Once you install the package, you should be able to logout and log back in and see it available in your favorites on the left side of the screen (this is assuming you are using Maverick Meerkat, with Unity as your display manager).

To run the program, simply click the PrixFixe icon in the favorites dock or run prixfixe from command line (as user, not root), and follow the on-screen gui prompts.

After this, logout/login and you should have a menu item created based on the information the gui received from you. At this time prixfixe menu items require the logout/login since I didn't spend enough time figuring out what tickles Unity to reload the menu bar. The most I started to pick up on were /usr/share/applications/bamf.conf, bamfdaemon, dbus, and gdm.

It ended up being easier just to have the user logout/login

[Rocket J Squirrel]

Thanks, LinkMJB. One final question: what information about the application I want to put on the launcher thingy do I need to gather before starting prixfixe?

[LinkMJB]

Hey Rocket,

Approach using PrixFixe the same way you would Alacarte... the gui will walk you through everything you need to know, and if it needs a file path (for the program you want to run, and the icon you want to use) it will popup a file navigation window for you to pick the program/icon.

The following are each question PrixFixe will ask:
1) Program name

This will end up being what the program is called in the favorites menu. It is also important you choose something UNIQUE here. i.e. -> If you have "firefox" as an application you are making the menu for, don't name it "firefox" in fear you may overwrite the official menu item for it in "applications". Something like "firefox-launch" or "firefox-fav" would be better

2) Program Description

Enter whatever you like here, to describe the program you are making a menu entry for

3) Program Icon

Choose any icon you would like to use for the menu item. If you are making one for a program that already exists, you can choose the same one if you want. You can figure out what other programs are using their icon as by looking at '/usr/share/applications/[program_name].desktop'

4) Program Path

This will be what the menu item executes when you click it. You can figure out what other programs call by looking at the same file I listed above, or by trying this command: 'which [program_name]'

5) Program Type

These are the different sections that exist under "Applications", choose whatever category you think it belongs in

6) Arguments for the program

Now that you chose what the program path is, do you want any arguments for it? i.e. -> (for 'ls', something like '-al' may be wanted here)

7) Terminal usage

If this program does not have a GUI that will run (a command versus a GUI application), you will want to choose this option so you can see the output in the terminal window

Give it a try, PrixFixe should be pretty hard to "screw up", unless you choose an application name that exists already
Let me know if you have any other questions.

[cvmostert]

Thanks for the post.

I installed Blender 2.5 (not yet in the repositories) and made a launcher on the Desktop.

I could pin the shortcut but could not delete it afterwards from the desktop, if I did delete from the Desktop, the Pin-on also went. so what I needed to do is to copy the Launcher I made to /usr/share/applications
and i could search for the application in Unity to pin it.

Thanks for leading me into the right direction.

Cheers

Alright boys and girls, I spent some time tinkering with this tonight and found a solution using user preferences. I am considering writing a zenity front-end/(python/bash) backend to automate user input, bridging or to replacing "alacarte/Main Menu" functionalities to make this easier for the average user.

Here is what I have found so far ->
1) User customization is based in ~/.gconf/desktop/unity/launcher/favorites
2) Each application in your favorites has a directory within the favorites folder, and is indexed/referenced using the %gconf.xml
3) If you have already created a custom folder/application using alacarte/Main Menu, you should already have a file created under /usr/share/applications you can reference in the next step. Otherwise, make one using alacarte/Main Menu
4) cp -pr ~/.gconf/desktop/unity/launcher/favorites/app-firefox.desktop ~/.gconf/desktop/unity/launcher/favorites/app-[custom_name].desktop
6) vi ~/.gconf/desktop/unity/launcher/favorites/app-[custom_name].desktop/%gconf.xml
7) insert a line like so (inside the <gconf></gconf>):

<entry name="desktop_file" type="string">

<stringvalue>/usr/share/applications/[custom_name].desktop</stringvalue>

</entry>

8) Logout and log back in, or restart gdm ('sudo restart gdm')

NOTE: I assume similar things can be done to add programs into "Applications", but I expect it will live under /usr/share and effect ALL users...

Have fun! I will post back here when/if I create the GUI front-end to handle these steps, and provide a method to retrieve the .deb package