>    Le 25/12/2023 à 04:52, Steve Litt a écrit :

>    Le 24/12/2023 à 21:27, Gianluca Zoni via Dng a écrit :

>        You both, what you achieved is the result of a lot of configuration
>    and scripting work. Instead, any DE works almost fine out of the box and
>    is configurable through a menu.

>        I think the general answer to the original question is that heavily
>    using menus is less efficient than heavily using command-line, but, on the
>    other hand, a menu is self-documenting, therefore, more efficient for
>    applications you rarely use. For example, a terminal emulator is the very
>    interface for command-line, but do you like to spend days in customizing
>    its apearance? No, this very task you do only once is more efficiently
>    done through a menu.

>        In Xterm, everything is configurable through one zilion command-line
>    options, which, in practice would imply to RTFM and write one's own script
>    to start it, because it does not read a config file. Konsole,
>    Gnome-terminal or Xfce4-terminal, what more are they than front-ends to
>    Xterm with config files and menu-driven configuration.

>        For what regards Dmenu, in all DEs there is an application menu for
>    all applications which are "integrated" in the Freedesktop sense, which
>    just means they come with a .desktop file stored in
>    /usr/share/applications/ . Do you, Steve, find it feasible to
>    automatically read all the .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/ and
>    build a Dmenu tree for all of them? Each .desktop file includes a
>    "category" which drives the structure of the menu as a two-level tree. I
>    think this kind of tool might boost the adoption of Dmenu.

>    --     Didier

a desktop system is not just its graphical layout. Let's get some
clarity: 
- graphical setup is not an everyday practice:
  whether it is accomplished by filling out a graphical form or
  by writing very complicated software, it usually ends there,
  once and for all. Only people with severe psychological
  problems incessantly continue to change the parameters that
  define the graphical appearance of the system: the
  "self-documented" "ticked" GUI serves only once.  And it can be
  done even without "desktop":  it is just a software to change
  the configuration with a friendly interface.  
 --> A friendly software for configuring the graphical appearance
     can be used even without desktop, for xterm as well as for
     any program,  if you really want to. I don't think that's
     what the "desktop" is aimed at,  because no sane person
     keeps - insistently - changing the settings  

- a desktop system is systemic software designed for an overall
  experience:  it is a habit of life. What I am contesting is
  precisely this closed view of the possibilities of using a
  machine that can have far greater potential even at an
  elementary level:  "computer literacy" means being able to
  write  to a computer telling it what to do, even in iterative
  operations and using variables, through the file system...
  Without a desktop, users would be forced to think, rather than
  gesture with the mouse.
  The power of the written word - according to logic - would
  become central.  It is a pedagogical problem, but above all a
  civil and political one: it concerns habits and the attitude to
  freedom
  --> as McLuhan said: «the medium is the mEssage»
  --> but also (as claimed by his successors, for example De
      Kerckhove) «the medium is the mAssage»