Projects/Plasma/AppsMenuReorganization

Apps Menu Structure Proposal. I'd like to make apps menu more fine-grained by introducing submenus

Internet

Web

• Konqueror
• Akregator

File download and sharing

• aMule
• KTorrent
• KGet

Communication

• KMail
• Kopete
• Konversation
• Kontact
• Knode

Connectivity

• KPPP
• KRDC
• KRFB
• <monitoring apps?>

Multimedia

Play and Manage

• amarok
• k3b
• <tag editors>
• <videoplayers>

Create and edit

• Kino
• Audacity

Graphics

View and Manage

• Gwenview
• Digikam

Create and edit

• Krita
• Kolourpaint
• Gimp

Education

• Blinken

Lingustic

• KHangMan
• KWordQuiz
• Parley

Math

• KmPlot
• KAlgebra
• Kig

Science

• KStars
• Kalzium
• KTurtle

Office

Groupware

• <kontact, kdepim apps>

OpenOffice.org

• <openoffice apps>

KOffice

• <koffice apps>

Desktop publishing

• <plain texteditors>
• scribus
• kile

System Tools

• Konsole
• KSysGuard
• KSystemLog
• Strigi search
• <backup app>
• <Accessibility apps>

Configuration

• <...>

Engineering

• kompare

Programming

• KDevelop
• KCachegrind

Web-development

• Quanta

Translation

• Lokalize

Math

Alternatively, instead of 'Office' we could use 'Desktop Publishing', putting 'Groupware (Kontact)' into 'Internet' +merge 'Graphics' to 'Multimedia':

• Multimedia
• k3b
  • Music
    • Play and Manage (amarok, tag editors)
    • Create and edit (Audacity)
  • Video
    • Play
    • Create and edit (kino, etc)
  • Graphics
    • View and Manage (Gwenview, Digikam)
    • Create and edit (Krita, Kolourpaint, Gimp)

Special entry in .desktop files determining the priority

• The order is important (Menu-Priotity field)
• apps with Menu-Priotity below some constant could be visually separated

by the line

• A lot of apps may be hidden, we should decide how to do this

(Menu-Priotity threshold)

• If category has only 1 item, the item should be displayed instead of

category

• 'Utilities' category isn't needed at all. For example:

-'root terminal' should be in System, -charselect should be callable from anywhere but K-Menu (plasmoid?) -kcalc should be a plasmoid I like he way desktop widgets are displayed in Mac OS X

Critisism I recieved from kde-devel@ so far: > .... submenus are bad. They do not seem very usable to me, > especially when the structure is not evident: ... so it's better to look through all 10-20 entries (possibly in in each category) before finding app that you need?

> This breaks traditional alphabetical order... alphabetical order is of small value when user doesnt know the name of the app he is looking for.

remember, the menu is for newcomers, experienced users use 'Search' field anyway.