'Hidden Gems' in Knoppix 7

[utu]

.
I'm beginning to think Klaus K always puts in some hidden goodies for us.
This time it is a working 'Main Menu' menu editor entry
on the DVD Main Menu at Main Menu>Preferences>Main Menu.

If your persistence is working, you should try this exercise for yourself.
1. Create a New Menu 'Hidden Gems' ...actually a sub-menu of Main Menu;
2. Under this sub-menu, add the following three New Items with Names
Aptitude, Htop & Top. For these three, the command syntax is
for example: lxterminal -t aptitude --command=aptitude;
3. Add a separator; and
4. Add two more New Items with names AlsaMixer & Midnight Commander.
For these two the syntax which worked was
lxterminal -t alsamixer -e alsamixer and lxterminal -e mc.

None of these use the 'Runs in 'terminal emulator' option.

It took longer to write this up than it does to get yours working.
For extra credit, figure how to get vrms to work under this scheme;
I'm stuck there.

If you have some favorite hidden gems, share them with us here and let
us know if there are any peculiar command format requirements.

[utu]

.
Name: VRMS
Command: lxterminal --geometry=91x37 -t=vrms -e less vrms.txt
Tool tip: Virtual RM Stallman
Requires preliminary step: do vrms>vrms.txt to provide text file.
man vrms gives description.

Name: X-Kill
Command: lxterminal -t xkill -e xkill
Tool tip: X=program terminator
man xkill gives description.

[utu]

.
We have a small problem.

I've had a lot of fun creating my own sub menu 'Hidden Gems' using
Alacarte in Knoppix 7.0.1. However, I just noticed, I no longer
have a Knoppix sub-menu. Surprise.

I just checked the LiveCD menu list against my new menu list.
The good news is all menu items are accounted for.

The bad news is that all the Knoppix sub-menu items now occur
under Preferences, distributed in good alphabetic order amongst
the other residents that were already there. I no longer have
a distinct Knoppix sub-menu.

I recall that with lxmed it was hard to invent new sub-menus,
maybe that's at work here as well.

It seems when I asked for a new submenu on the main menu,
the Knoppix slot got co-opted, its displaced items went to the
original bottom sub-menu.

The capability to create new sub-menus on the main menu would
have been THE feature missing in lxmed. I expect it SHOULD work
in Alacarte, but don't know what has made it mis-function.

Stay tuned, it aint over 'til its over.
The authorities have been notified.

[utu]

.
I've done a little research on Alacarte and have decided it is a disaster.

Using the installed 'Main Menu' (Alacarte) menu editor in Knoppix 7 initially
seems to be allowing construction of a menu addition. However, you may not
recognize that it creates a mixed salad out of your original menu.

I've started over on this exercise along the lines I published earlier for
Knoppix 6. I've only extended that earlier approach by using Klaus K's method
he uses in Knoppix 7 to create new menu categories.

The modified approach which works is as follows.

1. Create a new Main Menu category 'Hidden Gems' by copying & editing
/etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/knoppix.desktop to a similar text file
/etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/gems.desktop.

2. Create new items for the Hidden Gems menu by copying & editing
/usr/share/applications/htop.desktop to similar text files
/usr/share/applications/*.destop where * is top, alsamixer, mc, aptitude,
vrms and xkill.

3. Editing desktop files may most easily be done using the pop-up gui which appears
with a right-click on each menu item. Rather than using 'Runs in terminal emulator',
one may control the lxterminal title and geometry better by using the command-
line options just as described earlier.

This all works nicely and doesn't destroy your nice Knoppix and Wine sub-menus,
as did my ill-fated experience with Alacarte.

[utu]

.


3. Editing desktop files may most easily be done using the pop-up gui which appears
with a right-click on each menu item.
You might not expect it to be the case but the desktop files in /usr/shar/applications/
that are edited by using the pop-up guis are placed in /home/knoppix/.local/share/applications/
under the same names as their /usr/share/applications parents but with changes you've
made.

These .local files then become THE effective ones to address if there are any other
changes to be made. Such as in the categories. If you want to delete 'Systems;'
so things ONLY show in 'Gems;' then do it to the .local files, otherwise you'll be ignored.

These caveats apply as well to ANY menu item you have edited in this way, not just
the Hidden Gems group.

[Blacksimon]

Hi guys,
to restore the initial menu you have to delete the file /home/knoppix/menus/lxde-application.menu created by alacarte.
knoppix e wine menus "magically reappear" after restarting

[utu]

@ Blacksimon

You will also find a lot of trash left over from Alacarte in /home/knoppix/.local/share/applications/,
especially if you were expecting the 'undo' funtion to help out in these matters.

Sorting out what to keep and what to throw away may be more trouble than making
a new LiveUSB.

[Blacksimon]

Hi Utu,
yes I've found some trash in it. I've delete also /home/knoppix/.config/menus/lxde-application.menu
I HATE ALACARTE !!!

[Werner P. Schulz]

I HATE ALACARTEIt's a Gnome tool, not designed for LXDE :-)

[Blacksimon]

Yes, I understand....
anyway I solved the problem

1: Do NOT use Alacarte
2: Delete /home/knoppix/menus/*
3: Delete /home/knoppix/.config/menus/*
4: Create new menu category called "Hidden Gems" in /etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/ (copying & editing for example knoppix.menu to learn the correct syntax)
5: Create new items called "XKill" for the "Hidden Gems" menu just created putting Xkill.desktop file in /home/knoppix/.local/share/applications/ (copying & editing other .desktop file to see the correct options) and so on for other items
6: In a terminal:
root@Black:/home/knoppix# xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate #I don't know if it's necessary

Take a look to explore the topic:
http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/
http://portland.freedesktop.org/xdg-utils-1.0/xdg-desktop-menu.html

[utu]

@ Blacksimon

Actually, I don't recommend trying to repair a Knoppix 7 that has been using Alacarte,
because I'm not sure what all to remove and what to keep. In my case, I was using 701
experimenting with Alacarte. I decided to upgrade to 702 and start over with a clean
Knoppix.

I was initially unaware of /home/knoppix/.local/share/applications/*.desktop files.
I prepared several copies of htop.desktop within /usr/share/applications itself
and was unaware until later that editing with the gui was creating surrogate
desktop files in ~/.local/share.

I never had to reboot to get some menu action. Perhaps a control-alt-backspace, but
I can't remember. Surely no arcane incantation.

In my situation, one of my edits was to remove 'System;' from the categories list, else
the app would show up in BOTH System and Gems menus.

I really like the ability to use the command line to tailor lxterminal panel titles,
add sudo, change the geometry and do all sorts of cute things.

Are you adding any 'hidden gems' we'd all like to know about?

[Blacksimon]

Hi Utu,
any "hidden gems" to add for now...

Better start over a clean system but I spent several days to migrate from 6.7.1 to 7.0.1 and customizing all the settings, and until I will solve the problem of the webcam functionality, I will do other tests with it (http://knoppix.net/forum/threads/29865-UVC-Webcam-with-Knoppix-7.0.2)

Regards

[utu]

.
The following give some examples of using some of the ideas
posted in this and nearby threads.
Best seen with Knoppix Image Viewer in Full-Screen mode & 1366x768.

Enjoy.

[utu]

Sorry.

Forum editor changed .png to .jpg on four files submitted.
Could not correct this before 10 min time-out, so hopefully removed these
until I discover how to overcome this problem..

[utu]

.
I want to display several full-screen images which I have in png format.
In png, each is about 200k; converted to jpg they are even a little larger.
Neither of these fit the forum size limitations.

This is the default size which the Knoppix ScreenShot application provides.

These sizes are not a problem for ordinary e-mail, I am surprised that they
are a problem for the forum.

I'm not sure what the forum was doing with the pngs but i don't think the forum jpgs
would be the same image as my pngs.

[utu]

.
Here's a sample of what I had hoped to post as full-screen,
Showing how all the 'Gems' ideas come together.

It would be more impressive viewed in full-screen, using
the original pngs and the Image Viewer.

Use browser at full-screen and
just try to ignore the browser scroll-bars at browser full-screen.

http://postimage.org/image/94aq8uzkj/full/

[utu]

.
Here are three screens I hoped to show earlier.
If you click on one of the png files and go to browser full-screen,
they display almost as well as with Image Viewer.

If you zoom before full-screen, the result is less satisfacory.

Hope these motivate you to find and report other hidden gems
we can all use.