MenuLibre issues with MX Tools and categories

[advice1010]

MX 23.4 XFCE
MenuLibre 2.2.2 (default version provided in MX 23.4)
Whisker Menu 2.8.3 (from MX Test repo)

Some items mentioned are more MenuLibre issues but my tests were when trying to organize MX Tools into categories, so some questions are MX based.
In general I have noticed issues with many Menu editors whether 3rd party or provided by DEs themeselves, so this seems like a common thing that is hard to get right.

I apologize this is going to just be a bunch of random information shared because not sure the causes/reasons for some of this stuff.
For this post I will try to focus on the MX Tools category and MX tools themselves, but I think some of these issues just occur in general in MenuLibre.

I like applications to only have one instance within my Menu.
However applications like LibreOffice, MX Tools, etc. are setup to show up in various categories.

There is an "MX Tools" category that MX provides in Desktop Menu / Whisker Menu.
So this is a custom text file entry added by the MX Team.
MX tools are shown in a few categories: MX Tools, Settings, System, etc.
I tried an experiment to see if I could just get all the MX tools to show up in just the "MX Tools" category and found some really strange behavior.

STRANGE TEST RESULTS
Here are some random things I experienced when in MenuLibre....
-I tried removing all the items in the "Categories" tab "Category Name" column but one.
Sometimes an application "Category Name" column would only have one item showing but it would show up in two or more categories
-If you use the Delete remove trash icon at the top, all the items come back.
-Sometimes if I deleted the MX item in the "Category Name" column using the "-" minus sign or the delete trash icon, for example: "MX-Setup" then all of a sudden "mx-tools" would appear in this column instead.

CATEGORY NAMES
Category names have often confused me, guess this is just how the desktop.org decided to achieve this but why would "Utility" be set to show as "Accessories" and "AudioVideo" be set to show as "Multimedia" is there a reason why they did not just use the same names? Probably a legacy issue?

Also I have noticed that there are other category names that show up, that do different things, but they still show up in the Category Name column.
Like for example, "Xfburn" shows up with Category Name "DiscBurning" which then shows up in "Multimedia" category, which is actually "AudioVideo" :)
Some items show "GNOME" and "GTK" items.

So back to MX items, I have seen.....
-MX-Setup (which has a Description "M X-Setup" strange spacing)
-mx-tools
-MX-Maintenance
-MX-Software
-MX-Live (which has a Description "M X- Live" strange spacing)
some show
-X-antiX
Do all of these random categories show up as flyouts somewhere?
Is all of this information used elsewhere in MX? Seems random, but maybe its like some of the "XFCE" category name items, which I found out in the past had to do with things like their "Application Menu" list. Which is how that MenuLibre sidebar is setup by default, to mimic that XFCE Application Menu.
How come I do not see something like "MX-Tools" to indicate the "MX Tools" actual category name used in Whisker?
This way I could just set all MX Tools to that category item.

If you try using the "+" icon to add categories, you get flyout menus.
None of these MX items show up in these flyouts menus, so custom items I guess do not show up.
I know that in general these are referencing text files that show "Categories=", are all the MX items just achieved this way, meaning you cannot set them in MenuLibre?
Would prefer to not have to go into a bunch of text files to fix categories.
Probably not worth doing.

Anyways, lot of random information.
If anyone has any information they can share about anything I mentioned, please let me know.
Thank You

[dolphin_oracle]

to see how the menu is generated, take a look at /etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/

the various mx categories are used by the MX-Tools application for sorting, much like the xfce settings manager uses different categories to sort applications.

[advice1010]

Ahh okay so they do have another purpose, I did not realize that the "MX Tools" application would also make use of that data.
I still have to check, I wonder if that is why I was getting the results that I was not being able to organize the various MX tools into the categories I desired, they must have to stay, because if they are modified then the actual "MX Tools" application would not be able to work properly. Again I have check this.
Anyways, Thank You Dolphin

If anyone else has any more information they would like to share, let me know.
Has anyone ever ran into any of the other issues I have mentioned, like where items show up in multiple categories even though they only show one category?
I have seen others mentioned some similar bugs.
Tricky thing is it is hard to know what other applications are using this data, for example as Dolphin has mentioned above.
I was only thinking that is was the Panel Menu itself such as Whisker Menu or the XFCE Applications menu.
Could be why cannot change certain application categories as easy as others?

[j2mcgreg]

@advice1010
What is your agenda here? You post these rhetorical, sometimes critical queries on the inner workings of MX that only seem to service your interests rather than helping others, which is the aim of these forums.

[advice1010]

What is my agenda?
-To be able to experience "Extensive support ......through videos, documentation and a very friendly Forum"
-To be able to ask some questions on a forum that is designed for people to be able to ask questions on
-To be able to ask questions that are specific to the interests/issues that I am experiencing
-To not have to combine many questions all into one post, making them too confusing for people to follow
-To have my posts remain open so that users can respond to them and not closed/locked out preventing them from being about to do so
-To be able to make requests for features
-To get confirmation on bugs that I find so that I can report them to people that can maybe fix them
-To get answers to the questions that I ask rather than having to defend myself / getting into arguments with people
-To learn from those answers and apply them to the issues that I am experiencing and or am curious about
-To be able to interact with users that are kind and helpful
-World Domination

[DukeComposed]

This is going to cover a few threads at once.

What is my agenda?
-World Domination

Well at least we can agree on something. It's the rest of the stuff I think that are causing problems.

What is my agenda?
-To be able to experience "Extensive support ......through videos, documentation and a very friendly Forum"
-To be able to ask some questions on a forum that is designed for people to be able to ask questions on
-To be able to ask questions that are specific to the interests/issues that I am experiencing
-To not have to combine many questions all into one post, making them too confusing for people to follow

I think this list starts out as dismissive, bordering on disingenuous. You know you're welcome to ask questions. I'll go into detail about that in a bit. First I want to tackle the "not making questions too confusing for people to follow" part.

I've seen a history of your posts, covering similar topics. They all involve just a few issues: questions about keyboard inputs, Caps Lock, number pads. Threads asking basic questions about Debian packages. Each of these threads begins as a tirade of "I want this" and "But I don't want that", often with bulletpoints outlining some exemplary sidenote. It's all broken down very academically. This style of writing in itself is confusing for people to follow. Especially if they aren't academics.

As a test -- I know you like those -- I took the preface to this thread and fed it through hemingwayapp.com. It graded 6 of the first 10 sentences as either "hard to read" or "very hard to read". And that included the fact I stopped before the subsection titled "Strange Test Results" in all capital letters.

I don't point this out to criticize your writing skills. If you think you're posting clear questions that will serve to help posterity, you are mistaken. This forum is a diverse community of enthusiasts who are happy to help you. Now I'm wondering if it's help you really want. Or maybe you feel entitled to amusement through philosophical, Socratic dialogues.

OK, now for the first points of the quote-unquote "agenda". An agenda is a list of things you want to accomplish. Saying things like "I want to be able to experience support" is not an achievement to which you can aspire. You signed up. You made an account. You've posted hundreds of times over the last two years and have gotten a bunch of support. That part's not in any doubt. Answering j2mcgreg's question in this manner is dismissive and an indicator you can't or won't answer his question honestly. He's not asking if you want to utilize forum resources. He's asking something like "What is the end goal you are trying to achieve?" He's asking you to cut out the abstract, pseudo-analytical nonsense and state what you're trying to get done so you can go do it and we can move on with our lives.

About once a year someone shows up on this forum, opens a bunch of threads, and gets chastised for it. They usually end up replying with something like what you've written: "Forums are for asking questions, I should be allowed to ask questions." This is a naïve argument, one made insincerely, and it ignores the fact that this forum is a community of volunteers. Those volunteers are under no obligation to answer those questions when the asker becomes tiresome or offensive.

I'll cite an old thread from last year that has similar tones to the ones you've posted. The user was unaware of how a common UNIX utility worked and asked for help. After multiple threads of "I just learned about the program foo, how do I use foo?", he was warned not to use this forum for his personal projects and to stop asking other people to do his homework for him.

I think the most succinct thought on the matter comes from our own j2mcgreg:

[T]here is an expectation here (and on every other Linux forum) that the people asking questions will have researched their problems first and that the questions being asked are pertinent to the forums where they are posed.... There are plenty of resources on the internet to teach you the ins and outs of shell scripting and had you done your research, you surely would have encountered them.

"Shell scripting" here can be substituted with "Debian package management". Or "menu configs". Or "Synaptic", which is a Canonical project and not something the MX team controls.

I find it hard to believe that years of archived posts, Google, and links provided by a dev can't answer any of your questions about how packages work. I'll bet similar questions about menus and Caps Lock keys and xmodmap would fall into the "this has been answered before" category, too.

All of this comes across as another Goldilocks situation. "I know there are dozens/hundreds/thousands of answers to the questions I have, but I don't want to read those, I want one that's just right." You're allowed to ask for help. You have. People have volunteered their time and energy to help you. We can reply all day long.

We can't understand it for you. There comes a point where you should go soul-searching. If you wonder why and how things are the way they are, take a walk and think your thoughts. That's fine. This stuff is complicated. It's OK if it doesn't make sense for a few years. I've been doing this for a long, long time. And with all my knowledge and all my experience, I still feel like I'm a student still in his learning phase. I've learned a ton by watching what other people have done. Don't make the mistake of thinking "I'm climbing this mountain, and that guy is climbing this mountain, but he isn't exactly where I'm standing, so he has nothing to teach me. I better start from scratch."

Take this feedback in the spirit it was given, and good luck figuring things out.

EDIT: typo

[Eadwine Rose]

Considering the question has been answered by Dolphin Oracle, which is a good starting point in the research the OP is going to do, and the fact that we are moving off topic now, I am closing this thread.