why doesn't icewm display my applications in menus?
 

I'm noticing that if I install Icewm in a distro that didn't come with it installed, almost none of my installed applications will display in the IceWm menus; the Programs and Applications menus will contain nothing. I've seen this in two distros so far--VectorLinux and antiX--that didn't include Icewm. Is this a problem I can fix or some inherent limitation of Icewm that I have to simply live with? Will applications that show up in the menu of one desktop not necessarily show up in another? I've almost always used KDE (or KDE Trinity) and don't have much experience with switching to lightweight desktops that don't have their own suite of software. Are they not expected to detect my applications and display them?

You need to edit them.

I've never used icewm longer than to just look at it, but the relevant files can likely be edited with a text editor, similar to Fluxbox's.

There are also GUI tools for doing that.

The icewm FAQ will tell you more.

http://www.icewm.org/FAQ/IceWM-FAQ-4.html

See section 4.2.

At least in Debian based distributions, like antiX, you should be able to use the menu package to generate menus for the lightweight WMs, if I remember correctly, at least with WMs like Openbox, I never tried that with IceWM.