Rename and reorder »uncategorized« items

Registered by Jan

Currently, all items in the main folder of both the application and system menu will show up as »Uncategorized«, not be shown by default and ordered below applications and system.

But it is very likely that these items more important than items in folders. That may be the reason why they’ve been put there in the first place – be it Software Center or items that were manually reordered to be accessed quicker.

With the side pane planning to be removed, we need a new place especially for »Software Center« and »Help and Support«. It would be intelligent to use the current »Uncategorized« for those 2 as well as for anything that lies in the root folder.

We only need a proper new name for the category. It is familiar to pinned items but different in that you can not edit it (except via alacarte). Maybe they should even be ordered above applications & places and not only be visible on search (see the reasoning mentioned earlier).

Blueprint information

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Not started
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None
Priority:
Medium
Drafter:
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Direction:
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Definition:
Approved
Series goal:
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Milestone target:
milestone icon 1.0

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[tvst 2010-07-14]

I'm considering automatically adding all "Uncategorized" items to the "Pinned Items" menu. This would remove some visual/logical redundancy, since they both serve similar purposes (albeit in different menu systems).

What do you think?

The only issue is that I'd have to keep track of uncategorized items that were automatically pinned but then manually unpinned, to make sure they aren't added again the next time Cardapio loads...

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[jancborchardt 2010-07-15]
Yes, that would be the best way to do it. But we need a fallback solution for when you accidentally (or deliberately) delete them from pinned items. Otherwise, these items will not be shown at all (or are they)?

So in addition to keeping track of them, I’d propose they should be added to »Accessories« in case they are unpinned. That way they are still always visible and accessible by search.

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[jancborchardt 2010-08-29]
I just caught myself wanting to remove the ›Uncategorized‹ category until I remembered what it is for.

I completely agree with your proposed solution of simply adding them to the pinned items. To not be able to accidentally remove them, this context menu option should be disabled on items from the menu root.

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[tvst 2010-08-29]

> To not be able to accidentally remove them, this context menu option should be disabled on items from the menu root.

I don't know if that's the best solution. Ideally all items in the "Pinned items" section should behave exactly the same from the user's point of view. Being able to unpin *some* items, but not *all* of them, would be confusing, IMO.

What I think I'll end up doing is implement a mixed pinned items section, that reads some of its items from the settings file and others from the Gnome menus. Its behavior would be the following:

- If you choose to pin an item:
The item will be pinned by saving it to the settings file as happens now

- If you choose to unpin an item:
The item will be unpinned in one of the following ways

  a) If the item is pinned through the settings file mechanism:
  Remove it from the settings file, as happens now.

  b) If the item is pinned through the root menu:
  Hide it from the root menu

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[jancborchardt 2010-08-30]
Yes, I think that’s a reasonable choice since most of the time there are no items in the root menu except for Software Center anyway (which is also in ›System‹). And if there are problems it can still be changed – it’s definitely better than the current solution.

(?)

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