Drag and Drop (Start) Menu entries to Desktop

[Mintberry1]

I wanted to suggest that you can drag and drop menu entries of programs to the Desktop (To make an additional copy of the launcher on the Desktop) and the bottom Panel bar as well to make a copy.

I know you can rightclick on the entry and choose the option but drag and drop would be nice, easy and intuitively to use i think

And also is possible and easy do that.

[JosephMcc]

You can already drag and drop applications to the panel launchers applet. Doing it to the desktop might be a different story since you are talking about two different UI toolkits.

@JosephMcc he say "menu entries", but you also can add panel buttons launchers and they are clutter objects...

He also only want to create a .desktop file (this is not a different UI toolkits), is just a file witch a format specification that you can create when you want and put where you want over cjs.

Inside the desktop, there are a clutter object to. So, the desktop clutter object can capture the clutter buttons drop and ask for the delegate class of the buttons.

Then you can add a render_desktop_file function inside the delegate class with a path parameter (in that case the desktop path) for all types of buttons.

And now, when you capture the drop inside the desktop object, ask for the delegate class of the button, call the render_desktop_file function of the button with the desktop path parameter and then accepted the drop.

Done, this is just what is needed. i don't see the two different UI toolkits.

Edit: This probably it's not the best way... there are not information for what windows it's dragging. If this information come to cinnamon in a general way, will be possible also handle it (probably it's also difficult).

What could be difficult, is the possibility of make drag and drop from the desktop to the menu, but is also possible. Nemo is who control the desktop so, you can write a dbus function inside cinnamon Dbus with a path parameter of a desktop file. When nemo detect a drag of the .desktop file, he can call the Dbus function and with the path of the file as a parameter, then capture the response of the Dbus function and if is true stop the drag and drop and return the object that is dragging in the gtk toolkits to the original position (because now cinnamon know what he need to do).

As cinnamon receive the path of the desktop file inside the dbus function, he can construct a panel launcher button on fly and add it to the desktop object in the mouse position and force the drag and drop class to be a normal drag and drop of a clutter object. So, as it's a clutter object you can drop it inside any component where you want that accept this type of button.

This last techniques, also could be generic, if the dbus function receive also as a parameter the class of the object that cinnamon will construct. Again, the result clutter object can be drop in any clutter object that accept this type of object.

This have a directly application in cinnamon settings, to drag and drop applets and desklets from the settings to the cinnamon clutter objects.

[anandrkris]

Also linking a PR that wasn't merged for reference which has details on possible things to consider...
#842

Configurable Menu allows drag and drop application buttons to the desktop too...

[NikoKrause]

Isn't the configurable menu broken?
In the past I wanted to try it, but I was never able to get it running.
It seems as it is abandoned. I think the problem with configurable menu is, that it has too many configurations. Too many things, which could break and which make it harder to maintain.
In my opinion it should have been splited into more applets. If the source of these applets would stay as near as possible to the original menu, this would make it easier to maintain and to get fixes, which were made upstream. And it would have been easier to fork it.

[NikoKrause]

@lestcape
Could you reference the (specific) part of the code of Configurable menu, which handles this feature?

@NikoKrause the problem with configurable Menu, in my opinion, was extend for the cinnamon API, and then modify the children class, as the Cinnamon API is not stable, never was, my code of course will be broken on any little change inside the parent class (the cinnamon classes). I can easy fix configurable menu if i only create a fix where there are a change in cinnamon code. Just I’m done of do that... What i tray to do now it's not depend of cinnamon code at all... The configurable Menu kernel it's working in my computer, but with a lot of problems if i try to change something, because there are a lot of work to fix all possible behaviours. But how it`s now a change on the cinnamon code, will not create a problem on configurable Menu. For example in cinnamon the box-pointer was removed, but the configurable menu has his own box pointer...

Here you can find the relate code:
https://github.com/lestcape/Configurable-Menu/blob/master/configurableMenu%40lestcape/menuItems.js#L118

https://github.com/lestcape/Configurable-Menu/blob/master/configurableMenu%40lestcape/menuItems.js#L1340

@NikoKrause what possible you are looking for it's here:
https://github.com/lestcape/Configurable-Menu/blob/master/configurableMenu%40lestcape/menuItems.js#L2123

How in cinnamon, there are not a Desktop class, to accept the drop of the buttons, i handled the drop inside the button class instead (of course) inside the missing class.

What i do it's check if the button it's inside a desktop actor and if this is the case i render the desktop file in the desktop path, when the button was drop.

[NikoKrause]

@lestcape
Would the same code work with the original menu.
If yes, what speaks against this implementation?
I'm not very familiar with handling drag&drop code, but I think it isn't the fine British style to handle it like this, is it?