How do I manually edit the K-Menu, without using KMenuEdit?

Every time I use KMenuEdit, it corrupts my K-Menu somehow...entire submenus go missing frequently. The only way I can solve it is to delete my user account and start over from scratch. Until the next time KMenuEdit FUBARs my menu, that is.

I use Mandrake Linux 10.0 Community, with KDE 3.2

I have Mandrake set to Use Original Menu--I don't use the MDK-style menus. I have my own personal menu layout I use, based on KDE's.

I'm just guessing, but here goes...

If you look in your home directory, there should be a directory called ".menu"

In that directory are text files that specify your menus...

I have one called "added_by_menudrake", but the names of the files don't appear to be important, it's what's in them that seems to count...

For instance, my entry in "added_by_menudrake" for XBoard FICS is:

?package(menu): command="/usr/bin/xboard -ics -icshost freechess.org -icslogon .icsrc -icsinput -colorize -coords -highlight" icon="strategy_section.png" needs="text" title="XBoard FICS" section="Amusement/Boards/" longtitle="Online Chess" charset="ISO-8859-1"

So it appears the format is:

?package(<packagename>): command="<command+args>" icon="<icon file>" needs="text" title="<title>" section="<menusection>" longtitle="<title>" charset="ISO-8859-1"

You could try editing the files in ".menu" directory to add or remove entries similar to the above...

I haven't done this, so backup all those files before you give it a shot...

Thank you for bringing that to my attention! I had never noticed the ~.menu/ directory, and had always thought that the KDE menus were just stored in ~.kde/share/applnk-mdk (for my Mandrake 9.x system). The menus have repeatedly gone wonky on me, and I've just spent about an hour trying to copy differing versions of that directory tree to see what worked and what didn't work.

Now, here's a question: where the **** can we get documentation on things like .menu and how KDE works, instead of just diddling around and trying to notice things like that? I mean, I enjoy Linux tinkering as much as the next guy, but there comes a point when, dammit, I just have to start USING my computer for _real_ stuff, instead of trying to figure it out.

Thanks...I'll have to have a look around there when I get my system working properly again.