Chapter 3.

Menu Editing and Configuration

Tip

For detailed information describing the implementation of the menu system, refer to the Desktop

Menu Specification located at the freedesktop.org website: http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu 

spec/latest.

It is often useful for an administrator to add or remove items from the main desktop Applications

menu. Owing to the complexity of the menu system, modifying the Applications menu can sometimes

be a difficult task. For example, it is much more difficult to add a menu item than it is to remove a

menu item.

This chapter provides an overview of the menu system and documents methods for:

Removing menu items for individual users

Removing menu items for all users

Removing submenus for individual users

Removing submenus for all users

3.1. Overview of the Menu System

Note

This overview of the menu system is not intended to to be comprehensive in its scope. For detailed

information about the menu system, refer to the various menu related specifications at the freedesk 

top.org web site: http://www.freedesktop.org

The Red Hat menu system is based on the the freedesktop.org Desktop Menu Specification and con 

sists of three major sets of configuration and data files:

Menu (

*.menu

) Files

The

*.menu

files are XML configuration files that specify the order, hierarchy, and merging of

both menus and menu items.

The system

*.menu

files are located in

/etc/xdg/menus/

. User specific

*.menu

files are lo 

cated in

$HOME/.config/menus/

and can be edited to override the values specified in the

system

*.menu

files.

In particular, the

/etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu

file contains the definition of the

main application menu layout.