Empty "Create Document" menu

[A. Walton]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:21 PM, petr bug <petr.bug at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> Basically I see the "Create Document" menu equivalent (in
> abuse-ability sense) to the "Main Menu" (the one in top left for
> launching all the applications). Any package or user that can add item
> there can abuse it.
>
> So if ugly distro or super-user clutter either of the menus then
> super-user can clean it up using command line (kinda works now). If
> the user lacks super-user capability then there is a difference: the
> "Main Menu" has unprivileged mechanism (the "Main Menu" editor, in
> Preferences/Main Menu) for disabling items while "Create Document"
> does not.
>
> 2008/10/29 A. Walton <awalton at gnome.org>:
>> It's perfectly supported as designed. Put some template in ~/Templates
>> and enjoy. If you want to push it to new users, put it in
>> /etc/skel/Templates and every new user gets them.
>
> Where can user put the templates? To ~/Templates dir? No way, he/she
> does not know that information!

Seems you do though. Funny how we don't give users credit for being
able to find out even the most trivial of trivialities. Perhaps we
should Retitle it "Create Document from ~/Template" to waste even more
screen pixels?

>
> Perhaps if we add item "Add or Remove Templates..." to the bottom of
> the list which would open Nautilus with the directory. Or perhaps it
> could open editor similar to the "Main Menu" editor. This may also
> solve the problem when new application is installed and a new template
> is created in /etc/skel/Templates but existing users do not see the
> template.
>
>> Choice of menu items vs. Compulsory menu options. Hmm, tough choice eh?
>
> [flame on]
> That's the GNOME philosophy - a feature was made not configurable to
> make it "just simple", if user does not like it then bad luck.
> [flame off]

It's perfectly configurable the way it is. Open a folder, drag and
drop. Sure, we could add  a dialog with a list of checkboxes, a button
or two to add and remove templates, and have the users go in hit a few
knobs and turn off the links, but that seems like a hilariously
ludicrous workaround for something as easy to manage as a folder of
templates. Save the dialog and button twiddling for something that's
harder to manage, like which volumes appear on your desktop (as GVFS,
Hal aren't as easy to manage as a folder).

I personally have no problem seeing Ubuntu ship a few default
templates in /etc/skel/. From my GNOME point of view, I think it'd be
a healthy thing to do, and I think distros have the good sense to
manage what they put in there, even though it's not "recommended".