how to get menu item 'Applications' in E17, etc.?

[lugoteehalt]

Just installed Enlightenment E17 and it would be very nice to know -

1/ Clicking on root window background gives a menu with no 'Applications' button, how to remedy this?

2/ Cannot get transparency in Eterms, they take no notice of clicking their own Background > Toggle transparency menu.

3/ Why is ~/.e/e/Applications/menu/favorites (or something like that) so odd? The file is not in favorites, but in the same directory as the directory favourites (how weird is that?) and it gives a button for Eterm only if the entry for eterm is named, say, iceape.desktop and not eterm.desktop.

4/ The dialog that has 'all applications' on one side and something that needs applications on the other has nothing in the all applications part. How do I get some in?

5/ The built in file manager always spawns a new window when a directory is clicked so the desktop rapidly becomes covered in windows. How do you get the contents of the clicked directory to appear in the same window? Thanks any help at all.

[bwkaz]

Not sure on most of the rest, but:

2/ Cannot get transparency in Eterms, they take no notice of clicking their own Background > Toggle transparency menu. Eterm doesn't do real transparency. Instead, it gets a copy of the root window's pixmap from the program that set the pixmap last (I'm not sure how), and blends that with its contents itself. This means it needs to talk to whichever program last set the root window's pixmap -- and I think it can only talk to Esetroot.

So if you have the default X background, or you didn't use Esetroot to set the background, then transparency won't work.

One way to test would be to turn on transparency, then run "Esetroot -c -s <some file>.png" and see if the transparent Eterm does anything.

[voidinit]

To add new applications to E17's menus, cd to $HOME/.e/e/applications (or wherever your enlightenment configuration files are stored) and take a look around.

Creating a subdirectory in the favorite directory will create a submenu, putting .eap files into that directory will add applications to that submenu. You can use the .order file in each subdirectory to control the order the applications appear in the submenu. Putting an eap file directly into the favorite directory will add it to the favorite root menu. It's been a long time since I've worked with the .order files, so I'm not sure of their format. A quick google should provide some documentation.

Putting an .eap into the /bar subdirectory of applications/ will add the application to the launcher bar.

If you want to know how to create .eap files, to put into these menus, check out the help output for the enlightenment_eap program, or Left Click->Configuration->Eap Editor.

[lugoteehalt]

Thanks. Get the impression DR17 now uses .desktop files for compatibility with other window managers.

$ Esetroot -f picture.jpg (-f means fill screen) worked but only if picture.jpg was used by Enlightenment17, the window manager, as its 'wallpaper'.

The thing that may have been putting me off is that you see no change to the root window background when the Esetroot command is issued. But the Eterm does see it and will show it when the menu item (ctrl-rightClick for menu) background > toggle transparency is used.

Transparency looks a bit of a struggle for the computer, perhaps need a more recent Eterm.