This page discusses a suggestion to improve the Debian menu system.
When you working with proaudio on Linux, you work often the 'one-task-one-tool' way. This means you have to install a lot of proaudio software for recording, midi, synths etc. etc. This has as side effect that you end up with a very long list in your application menu, which gives a cluttered view.
This is an example of how such a menu might look like at this moment (Ubuntu here): http://img37.imageshack.us/i/desk1007.png/
It would be nice if this was looking like this instead: http://img141.imageshack.us/i/desk1008.png/
The suggestion is to improve this situation by changing the Debian menu system by adding new categories to the application menu.
Menu entries
1) Make a special application menu entry for multimedia (for consumer | desktop audio tools):
- Applications/Multimedia
- In this menu entry you put the multimedia players Examples: Mplayer, Vlc, Amarok etc (players).
2) Make extra entries in the Sound&Video menu entry (for pro audio and video tools), for example:
Applications/Sound & Video
Sound & Video production
Applications/Sound & Video/Audio Editing
- Editing, Mixing, Mastering Examples: audacity, jack-rack, lv2rack, guitarix
Applications/Sound & Video/JACK
- Jack and Alsa tools Examples: qjackctl, japa, jack_mixer
Applications/Sound & Video/MIDI
- Midi tools Examples: vkeybd, qsynth
Applications/Sound & Video/Musician
- Music score composition, and live musician training tools Examples: musescore, solfege, chordata, gtklick
Applications/Sound & Video/Recording
- Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and harddisk recording (HDR) Examples: ardour, qtractor
Applications/Sound & Video/Synth
- Syntesizers and programmatic sound processing Examples: phasex, yoshimi, puredata, qutecsound
Applications/Sound & Video/Video Editing
- Examples: pitivi, xjadeo, kino
Other possibilities
This is a suggestion, you can also think of extra entries or other names like:
Applications/Sound & Video/Guitar
- Guitarist related packages Examples: Rakarrack, Guitarix, Tuxguitar
Applications/Sound & Video/Soundsynthesis
- Soundsynthesis software Examples: Supercollider, Puredata, Csound
Applications/Sound & Video/Drums&Djing
- Software for drumming, beats and djing Examples: Hydrogen, Jackbeat, Mixxx, TerminatorX
or
Applications/Sound & Video/Digital Audio Workstation instead of Applications/Sound & Video/recording
- Digital Audio Workstations Examples: Ardour, Qtractor, Rosegarden, LMMS
To change this situation we have to add new categories to the Debian applications menu and add little changes to the Desktop files of the packages, packaged by the DebianMultimediaTeam, so that they will be placed in the right menu category of the Debian applications menu.