On Fri, 5 Aug 2016 23:43:33 -0400
Hendrik Boom <hendrik@???> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 05, 2016 at 03:15:24PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:

> > And the preceding system is human readable, human parsable, and to a
> > degree human creatable. But...
> >
> > Human creatable is relative. Yes, adding a new node to the menu
> > could be done quickly with a script. But moving a submenu from one
> > subtree to another could take a few minutes,
>

> Isn't it just a single
>     mv
> command?  Or maybe
>     ln -s
> if you want the submenu to show up both places?

Kinda sorta maybe.

It's more like this:

1) Check the destination parent for a conflict with this menu letter.

2) As a human, decide what to change to resolve that conflict.

3) If anything was directly calling the old submenu as a menustring
(this happens quite often, especially when making a menu
persistent), change the letterstring of the caller.

>
> I actually like using a file hierarchy such as you've outlined. No
> special tools needed, except perhaps one to check it for
> syntacticllly correct contents.

It has a certain charm to it, doesn't it? It uses Linux' filesystem as
a hierarchical database that the program can manipulate with lightning
speed. And a human at a command prompt can work with it if he's careful
and thorough.

A human with a good file manager can have his way with the system.

And I could easily make a Python Qt or a Lazarus program to
create/modify a submenu or command.

>
> It could still be useful to allow links of some sort to submenus in
> other files. That might permit better separation of concerns.

How so? Do you have an example that might clarify the context?

> But I suspect having each package include its own pieces of menu into
> the maelstrom is more easily done with separate files and conventions
> which directories they go into,

OHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I see what you mean. Silly me. I always think in terms of "each user
rolls his own," and never stop to think about packaging. I suppose a
standard for menustrings (the sequence of menu letters to drill down to
a submenu) could be made, and hopefully followed. There's one problem:
One of UMENU's basic foundational tenets is that no submenu can have two
occurrences of the same menu letter. It will fail if a submenu has two
of the same menuletter. This makes discipline a little more important.


SteveT

Steve Litt
August 2016 featured book: Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
Brand new, second edition
http://www.troubleshooters.com/mgr