The BunsenLabs Menu

johnraff · 2023-07-07 03:01:34

The big issue here, though, is that on Boron/Bookworm if a jgmenu pipemenu script opens an X window other than as a normal menu item, then the X session freezes. I have found that this does not happen on Debian 11.

Whether this issue is easily fixed or not is up to @malm to determine.

It's very unusual - and probably a bug - for a pipemenu to try to open an X window anyway, and fixing that in our pipemenus is something we have to look at. bl-imgur-upload can also be used standalone, and in that case the yad warning if xsel is missing is very useful. We just need to suppress it in the pipemenu.

TEST
If anyone wants to play with this and maybe find some clues, you can simplify things a lot:
1) Make a file ~/bin/test-pipemenu with this content:

#!/bin/sh
# test pipemenus
#x-terminal-emulator
printf '%s\n' 'Open Terminal,x-terminal-emulator'
#notify-send 'submenu created'
#x-terminal-emulator
exit

Make it executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/test-pipemenu

Add an item to your ~/.config/jgmenu/prepend.csv:

Test Pipemenu,^pipe( ~/bin/test-pipemenu )

Now try the new pipemenu which should show an item "Open Terminal", which does indeed open a terminal.

Next, uncomment the notify-send line, and confirm that the menu still works OK, while notifying you. (Why does notify-send not trigger the issue?)

Finally, uncomment the x-terminal-emulator line, either before or after the printf line which outputs the menu. The terminal opens but the menu and the whole desktop freezes.

If you've got mousepad, or any other small app, to hand you can use that instead.

Also check that it makes no difference if the app is forked:

mousepad &

To save some time recovering from the freeze: open a new TTY with Ctrl+Alt+F1, log in and run:

killall openbox

and you should be back at the login screen without having to reboot.

If you have both Beryllium and Boron systems to hand, it's interesting to compare: everything works on Bullseye/Beryllium.

sleekmason · 2023-07-07 12:37:43

Testing here with basically the same results, but noticed a hover issue that may be related?

- The script 'as is' works as it should, opening a terminal after the click.
- After uncommenting the notify send line, the message pops up when hovering, BEFORE any clicks.
- When uncommenting the terminal line, the message AND terminal open from the hover alone, without clicks, and then the desktop freezes. The mouse itself is left unaffected.

It doesn't make sense to activate on hover either way, so maybe something there? Forking made no difference.

hhh · 2023-07-07 13:08:29

Agreed to leave xsel as a recommended package. The lack of it causes jgmenu to create an error window that states that xsel is missing, so even though the desktop freezes, troubleshooting the issue is a no-brainer. And, of course, the user can register here and post questions for more info.

rbh · 2023-07-07 21:07:23

hhh wrote:

The lack of it causes jgmenu to create an error window that states that xsel is missing, so even though the desktop freezes, troubleshooting the issue is a no-brainer.

Now, I`m using an old laptop with an 1024x768 px screen. On that, the error message about xsel, is behind the jgmenu and mostly hidden. Not easy to make any sense of it...

johnraff · 2023-07-08 01:09:02

rbh wrote:

Now, I`m using an old laptop with an 1024x768 px screen. On that, the error message about xsel, is behind the jgmenu and mostly hidden. Not easy to make any sense of it...

That's what I get too, on my small VM.

I think we should try and fix the root cause of the freeze.

johnraff · 2023-07-08 01:14:32

sleekmason wrote:

- After uncommenting the notify send line, the message pops up when hovering, BEFORE any clicks.
- When uncommenting the terminal line, the message AND terminal open from the hover alone, without clicks, and then the desktop freezes. The mouse itself is left unaffected.
It doesn't make sense to activate on hover either way, so maybe something there? Forking made no difference.

You're right, a pipemenu should not be opening a terminal just by hovering. It doesn't make sense, but that mini-script is just to test the freeze issue. A real pipemenu shouldn't have lines like that, but the point is that even if it does, it shouldn't freeze the desktop.

johnraff · 2023-07-08 01:17:40

hhh wrote:

Agreed to leave xsel as a recommended package. The lack of it causes jgmenu to create an error window that states that xsel is missing, so even though the desktop freezes, troubleshooting the issue is a no-brainer. And, of course, the user can register here and post questions for more info.

Yeh, Recommend leaves the user free to do without xsel if they have some strong reason, and go on using the other scripts in bunsen-utilities that don't need it (most of them).

Meanwhile we can fix the freeze issue anyway, one way or another.

unklar · 2023-07-11 07:58:25

I was back on the ball today

These 7 packages were imported:

bunsen-configs-lite bunsen-conky bunsen-images-base bunsen-pipemenus bunsen-themes bunsen-utilities bunsen-welcome

Logging out and back in gave me changes to the tint2 bar and BL menu.
I was able to quickly restore the bar to my liking.

The Menu

I noticed positively the implementation of @rbh's suggestion for "User Settings" and "System Settings". Great work from you!

What I personally don't like are the icons in the menu.
This makes the whole thing seem "overloaded" to me. Perhaps a unified set of icons would be more appropriate. But I don't know where to get it from.

Apparently it's a "trend" in many distributions that icons have to be in the menu.

I have always enjoyed the BL menu without icons as a unique selling point of this distribution.

Thanks for your work, you three!
my three cents

hhh · 2023-07-11 08:56:38

unklar wrote:

What I personally don't like are the icons in the menu.
This makes the whole thing seem "overloaded" to me. Perhaps a unified set of icons would be more appropriate. But I don't know where to get it from.
Apparently it's a "trend" in many distributions that icons have to be in the menu.
I have always enjoyed the BL menu without icons as a unique selling point of this distribution.

Thanks for your work, you three!
my three cents

Thanks for the feedback, and the compliments!

Nothing is set yet, of course. For now, in case anybody doesn't know... Menu>Preferences>jgmenu>Edit Menu Settings> set 'icon_size = 0'

There are some mono-color icon sets out there. No idea if they're up to date...

Old!
https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1002558/

Much less old...
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-bw-icons.html

I'm forgetting one of the best ones (had a script, set the color and style, it's on DeviantArt somewhere).

rbh · 2023-07-11 09:02:23

unklar wrote:

What I personally don't like are the icons in the menu.
This makes the whole thing seem "overloaded" to me. Perhaps a unified set of icons would be more appropriate. But I don't know where to get it from.
Apparently it's a "trend" in many distributions that icons have to be in the menu.
I have always enjoyed the BL menu without icons as a unique selling point of this distribution.

In BL, the menu does not have to have icons!
To disable them, edit ~/.config/jgmenu/prepend.csv. Find the entry:

icon_size           =

Change from default value "16" to "0", to disable the icons.

hhh · 2023-07-11 09:12:42

Great minds post alike!

johnraff · 2023-07-11 09:32:07

Aah... @rbh and @hhh have beaten me to it, but for what it's worth:

unklar wrote:

What I personally don't like are the icons in the menu.
This makes the whole thing seem "overloaded" to me. Perhaps a unified set of icons would be more appropriate. But I don't know where to get it from.
Apparently it's a "trend" in many distributions that icons have to be in the menu.
I have always enjoyed the BL menu without icons as a unique selling point of this distribution.

Whether to have icons in the menu or not, by default, is still an open question.
Up to now we've had icon-free menus which do have a nice simple elegant look.

For the alpha iso, let's put in icons and see what the general opinion is.
(Personally, I have no problem with taking them out for the official release, or with having them in.)

Either way, it's very easy to switch off menu icons (we should put it in the Release Notes), just edit ~/.config/jgmenu/jgmenurc:

icon_size           = 0

Perhaps a unified set of icons would be more appropriate. But I don't know where to get it from.

It's also quite easy to have a different icon theme in the menu only:

icon_theme = Material-Solarized-Suru++

That theme was a big change from Papirus but only a subtle change from Numix, but anyway, here:
https://github.com/rtlewis88/rtl88-Them … Suru%2B%2B

You could try playing with different icon themes. I think you have to replace spaces with dashes in the theme names in jgmenurc.
'killall jgmenu' to force a refresh.

BTW you'll find gaps in the menu with no icon, depending on the icon theme. To fix that you have to change the name of the icon in ~/config/jgmenu/prepend.csv till you find one that works (the icon is the last item on each line). It's a tiring, irritating job.

find /usr/share/icons -iname '*somename*'

to see what you have on your system.

When choosing icon names to use in the menu I tried to keep to the Freedesktop standard names as far as possible, thinking that would give the best chance of an icon being found in other icon themes. It doesn't always work though.
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ … html#names

Also check all the other icon settings in 'man jgmenu'.

But anyway, just set 'icon_size = 0' to get rid of them.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-11-29 06:00:45)

unklar · 2023-07-11 13:44:08

@rbh, @hhh and @johnraff
Thank you for taking such good care of me and staying so relaxed!

@johnraff,

I know how tedious it is to replace and adjust the path of icons.
As far as I remember @ceeslans did this on their fluxbox machines with success.

For my part, I used the cool tip with the 0 in the jgmenurc file. That looks so classy to me...
Simply great!

BTW, this is my grub screen now.

@hhh my resolution is 1920x1080
If you have time, maybe you can make the flame a bit slimmer...

You are the best!

ceeslans · 2023-07-11 17:24:32

unklar wrote:

>snip<
I know how tedious it is to replace and adjust the path of icons.
As far as I remember @ceeslans did this on their fluxbox machines with success.
For my part, I used the cool tip with the 0 in the jgmenurc file. That looks so classy to me...
Simply great!
>snip<

Like proposed above, I too have fixed the 'icon_size' value to '0' in jgmenurc.
This iconsize setting can easily be overruled for specific tint2/themes in the exec command: jgmenu --icon-size=16
Oddly enough, this iconsize argument will not work in combination with jgmenu_run command - or at least not on my fluxbox setup... ymmv I guess.

The icontheme can be set in jgmenurc too, e.g.: icon_theme = Papirus
If no theme name is specified, then jgmenu will look for and select the systemwide-set icontheme - whilst still adhering to the iconsize argument in the exec command)
I don't think an argument exists to set a specific icontheme from the command line ... Should you know of any, I'd love to hear it.

Last edited by ceeslans (2023-07-11 17:44:00)

johnraff · 2023-07-12 01:51:41

johnraff wrote:

Personally, I have no problem with taking icons out for the official release, or with having them in.

The iconless menu looks clean and simple and a lot of people prefer it. Also, on less powerful systems, while jgmenu's caching helps, a menu with icons will take longer to display.

But menu icons aren't just decoration - they help you quickly find the entry you're looking for.

(Much discussion of icons here.)

Anyway, let's wait a bit and see if there's a consensus one way or the other.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-07-12 02:03:06)

or1o9 · 2023-08-03 03:34:26

Upgraded my "Boron" install, and the menu looks very good in my opinion. Very clean, neat and tidy. My personal preference is to have it without icons. But maybe "Boron" should have them as default? Easy enough to switch them off.

johnraff · 2023-08-03 04:57:02

orionH wrote:

My personal preference is to have it without icons. But maybe "Boron" should have them as default? Easy enough to switch them off.

Perhaps we can have icons on for the default light-aqua theming w. vertical tint2, along with no icons on the dark Boron theme, plus a traditional horizontal tint2. Show users the variations that are possible.

walter · 2023-08-06 15:18:49

Hi,

I have a suggestion that I believe would be an improvement of the prepend.cvs config file

The idea is to include at the top of the file something like:

## This is the config file of the static part the jgmenu.
## Other parts of the menu are dynamically generated and updated.
## Like the section of the 'Applications'
## If you wish to add items to the menu then this is the place to do that

And maybe, above the line for 'screenshot + upload;

## If you wish to add items to the menu then is this a good spot for it

##

Context;

As a basically new user I noticed that a newly installed program was classified in the 'Applications' menu as 'Office' instead as 'Internet'.

I thought; those menus are just config files. Easy fix to change that. But it was not so. It was not where I though it would be. I could not find other configuration files for the rest of the menu. Besides the one of 'help and resources'.

I have read the related man pages but could not find the config files for the applications. At the very last I read on the form ' jgmenu - How a graphical menu is built'.

I still have not find the locations of those config files. But so as I understand it that are not the files you should be manually edit. Because they are automatically generated and updated.

The place to manually mess with the menu is the static part of the jgmenu it seems. The part that is defined by prepend.cvs

My suggestion is to make that clear to those who goes to 'Preferences' -> 'jgmenu' -> 'Edit menu content'
And is looking to edit content that can not be found there. With a textual addition in the config file.

rbh · 2023-08-06 23:49:49

Maybe we should make some clarification to the presentation of jgmenu.

The menu entries for Applications under jgmenu => "All applications" (Boron), is read from /usr/share/applications/*. Those desktopsfiles is the classic Debian menu. They are textfiles. My feh.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Feh
Name[fr_FR]=Feh
Name[de_DE]=Feh
GenericName=Image viewer
GenericName[fr_FR]=Visualisateur d'image
GenericName[de_DE]=Bildbetrachter
Comment=Image viewer
Comment[fr_FR]=Visualisateur d'image
Comment[de_DE]=Bildbetrachter
Exec=feh %F
Icon=image-viewer
Type=Application
StartupNotify=false
NoDisplay=true
Hidden=false
Terminal=false
Categories=Graphics;Viewer;
MimeType=image/jpeg;image/png;image/gif;image/tiff;image/bmp;image/x-icon;image/x-xpixmap;image/x-xbitmap;image/webp;

It is the value of the field for "Categories", that controls where the entry will show up in the menu. The maintainer of the package has dome an error.
You should inform him/her of that bug.

johnraff · 2023-08-07 02:56:18

@Walter thank you for that suggestion - it's a good idea and I think we should add a comment like that at the top of prepend.csv.

Also, it might be worth mentioning here the difference between pipemenus and the auto-generated "All Applications" menu.

Pipemenus are relatively simple scripts that generate a jgmenu submenu on demand for some special purpose or other - like managing Conky for example. The BunsenLabs pipemenus are regular executable files in /usr/bin. Open prepend.csv and find an entry whose command is ^pipe(something). Native jgmenu pipemenus (that generate csv code) will just be a simple command, eg around line 41

Take Screenshot,^pipe(bl-scrot-pipemenu)

Most of the pipemenus, though, are openbox pipemenus that generate xml code. Jgmenu can use them too, eg line 23

 Places,^pipe(jgmenu_run ob --cmd="bl-places-pipemenu" --tag="bl-places-pipemenu"),folder

Either way, once you know the command you can run 'type command' to see where it is, or just look for it in /usr/bin.

To change how a pipemenu behaves, copy it to ~/bin and edit your personal copy there. Most of them are bash scripts.

The auto-generated "All Applications" menu is different. This is something that jgmenu generates by itself, using, as rbh said, the content of /usr/share/applications. There are various different menu generators which will interpret those files in slightly different ways, eg lxde and gnome have their own. Even jgmenu can use different modules to do this. Users can control to some extent how auto menus are generated, with *.menu files but this is rather complicated...

---
PS I've edited @walter's text a bit and provisionally added this to prepend.csv:

## This is the config file of the static part of jgmenu, and
## also specifies other parts which are dynamically generated
## like pipemenus and the 'All Applications' item.
## If you wish to add items to the menu then this is the place to do that.
## See: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=6512
## and: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewforum.php?id=25

Last edited by johnraff (2023-08-07 03:06:35)

#81 2023-07-07 03:01:34

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#82 2023-07-07 12:37:43

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#83 2023-07-07 13:08:29

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#84 2023-07-07 21:07:23

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#85 2023-07-08 01:09:02

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#86 2023-07-08 01:14:32

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#87 2023-07-08 01:17:40

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#88 2023-07-11 07:58:25

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#89 2023-07-11 08:56:38

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#90 2023-07-11 09:02:23

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#91 2023-07-11 09:12:42

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#92 2023-07-11 09:32:07

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#93 2023-07-11 13:44:08

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#94 2023-07-11 17:24:32

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#95 2023-07-12 01:51:41

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#96 2023-08-03 03:34:26

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#97 2023-08-03 04:57:02

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#98 2023-08-06 15:18:49

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#99 2023-08-06 23:49:49

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

#100 2023-08-07 02:56:18

Re: The BunsenLabs Menu

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