.
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.