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-rw-r--r--menu/menu-spec.xml65
1 files changed, 52 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/menu/menu-spec.xml b/menu/menu-spec.xml
index 72831fa..247499e 100644
--- a/menu/menu-spec.xml
+++ b/menu/menu-spec.xml
@@ -107,31 +107,70 @@
Here are the files defined by this specification:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
- <term><varname>$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS</varname>/menus/applications.menu</term>
+
+<term><varname>$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS</varname>/menus/<varname>${XDG_MENU_PREFIX}</varname>applications.menu</term>
<listitem>
<para>
- This file contains the XML definition of the main application menu
- layout. The first file found in the search path should be used;
- other files are ignored. This implies that if the user has
- their own applications.menu, it replaces the system wide one.
- (Though the user's menu may explicitly merge the system wide one.)
+ This file contains the XML definition of the main application
+ menu layout. The first file found in the search path should be
+ used; other files are ignored. This implies that if the user
+ has their own <varname>${XDG_MENU_PREFIX}</varname>applications.menu,
+ it replaces the system wide one.
+ (Though the user's menu may explicitly merge the system wide
+ one.)
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Systems that offer multiple desktop environments and that want
+ to use distinct menu layouts in the different environments can
+ use differently prefixed .menu files. In this case the
+ <varname>$XDG_MENU_PREFIX</varname> environment variable must
+ be set by the system to reflect the .menu file that is being
+ used.
</para>
<para>
- Other menu files may exist, but are not specified in this
- document.
+ For example if a system contains both the GNOME and the KDE
+ desktop environments it can decide to use
+ gnome-applications.menu as the menu layout in GNOME sessions
+ and kde-applications.menu as the menu layout in KDE sessions.
+ To correctly reflect this, it should set the
+ <varname>$XDG_MENU_PREFIX</varname> environment variable to
+ "gnome-" respectively "kde-".
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Implementations may chose to use .menu files with other names
+ for tasks or menus other than the main application menu. Such
+ usage is not covered by this specification.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
- <term><varname>$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS</varname>/menus/<replaceable>menu-file-basename</replaceable>-merged/</term>
+ <term><varname>$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS</varname>/menus/applications-merged/</term>
<listitem>
<para>
The default merge directories included in the
&lt;DefaultMergeDirs&gt; element. By convention, third parties
- may add new &lt;Menu&gt; files in this
- location. <replaceable>menu-file-basename</replaceable> means the
- "applications" from "applications.menu" for example. So the merge
- directory would be "applications-merged".
+ may add new &lt;Menu&gt; files in this location to create their
+ own sub-menus.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Note that a system that uses either gnome-applications.menu or
+ kde-applications.menu depending on the desktop environment in
+ use must still use applications-merged as the default merge
+ directory in both cases.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Implementations may chose to use .menu files with names other
+ than application.menu for tasks or menus other than the main
+ application menu. In that case the first part of the name of
+ the default merge directory is derived from the name of the
+ .menu file.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For example in a system that uses a preferences.menu file to
+ describe an additional menu, the default merge directories
+ included in the &lt;DefaultMergeDirs&gt; element in the
+ preferences.menu file would become
+ <varname>$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS</varname>/menus/preferences-merged/
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>