====== Installing the graphical user interface ======

===== Rationale =====

I chose the [[http://www.xfce.org|Xfce]] graphical environment for the following reasons:

  * It needs less resources than GNOME or KDE, which makes it a perfect solution for a virtual machine.

  * It includes nearly everything that one needs for a desktop environment, providing a user experience quite similar to Mac OS X or the multiple flavors of MS Windows.

  * It is quite easy to modify the menu structure and adjust their content according to needs (well, with v4.6, this is not strictly true anymore...More to come!).

You might ask: why not build over Xubuntu? After looking at what is in Xubuntu, I decided against using Xubuntu as a backbone: some packages are really not needed while other are a better fit to a virtual machine or a frugal distro. Priority No.1: build a unique GDM theme for Impilo to get rid of any Xubuntu look and feel...

The file named ''xfcegui_module.txt'' has the entire list of packages selected for creating the graphical user experience. Its content gets its inspiration from the [[http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/xfce4|''xfce4'']],[[http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/xfce4-goodies|''xfce4-goodies'']] and [[http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/xubuntu-desktop|''xubuntu-desktop'']] virtual packages. Of course, its content will evolve according to Ubuntu version and user feedback:

^ Impilo Versions         ^
| [[.:10_04_a10_build:xfcegui_Impilo_10.04|Impilo 10.04]]          |
| [[.:xfcegui_Impilo_8.04|Impilo 8.04]]          |

In addition, we are planning to add an even more frugal GUI environment. Among the candidates:

  * [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(window_manager)|Enlightenment]]
  * [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceWM|IceWM]]
  * [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openbox|OpenBox]]
  * [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxbox|Fluxbox]]

===== Creating the Impilo application menu =====

==== Menu Structure ====

The goal is to create a menu called ''Impilo'', containing a single level of sub-menus:

<code>

--SEPARATOR--

Impilo ---------> General purpose tools
              |-> Statistical analysis
              |-> Image analysis
              |-> Sequencing tools
              |-> Phylogeny - Analysis
              |-> Phylogeny - Trees
              |-> Multiple sequence alignements
              |-> Transcriptomics
              \-> 2D/3D molecule analysis

--SEPARATOR--

</code>

==== Xfce 4 ====

Before Xfce 4.6, we could used a tool called ''xfce4-menueditor'' to manipulate both structure and content of the menus in Xfce4. Ad of Xfce 4.6, this tool is now dead since Xfce 4.6 adheres to the Freedesktop.org specifications for menu content. The method to modify the menus is now done according to this recipe (inspired by [[http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu|this page]] and the [[http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/1.0/index.html|freedesktop's standards]]):

  * Under ''/etc/xdg/menus'', you will find a file called ''xfce-applications.menu''. This file needs to be modified so that we can include an ''Impilo'' sub-menu like this:
<code xml>
More to come...
</code>

  * We need to create the following ''*.directory'' files that we have to invoke in the ''xfce-applications.menu''. Under ''/usr/share/desktop-directories'', let's create the following files:
<code>
More to come...
</code>

  * More to come...