When I installed KiCad on Linux (KDE desktop), it added itself to the applications menu in the “Electronics” category. This makes sense.
It also added itself to the “Science and Math” category. Why is it there? This seems inappropriate to me.
Let’s not pollute the applications menus.
That’s distro specific. You have to take it up with your distro.
It’s from the LauchPad repo for Ubuntu, which is maintained by the “KiCad Team”, not Canonical.
Actually, we provide the metadata based on the Freedesktop specification.
However, the specification recommends (doesn’t appear to require) that we use a primary category (which is Science) in addition to our secondary category (Electronics). Since this doesn’t seem to be required, we’ll test it out by removing the primary category and see if any distros have heartburn about this.
I can guess that some obscure distro like Arch or PuppyLinux or something will file an issue for it.
Thanks for the explanation, Seth.
It’s less annoying than some other products. Digilent sticks their “Waveforms” product in multiple random places, like “Education”. I’m assuming that’s because a lot of their products are used in educational settings, but so is just about every other software product. FreeCAD put theirs in some equally silly place.
I would say this is a bug in your desktop environment for showing the same program in multiple categories just because the program metadata includes multiple categories. Including many categories seems to be the norm, so that the program can be found when searching under multiple different categories. The spec for the metadata specifically allows multiple different categories.
Here’s the metadata for kicad in my distro, openSUSE:
Name : kicad
Version : 8.0.6
Release : lp156.156.1
Architecture: x86_64
Install Date: Wed Nov 13 08:04:51 2024
Group : Productivity/Scientific/Electronics
Size : 230960134
License : AGPL-3.0-or-later AND GPL-3.0-or-later
...
Some distro builds get it right.
What application wouldn’t put itself in the “Productivity” group? That seems over-broad as well.
Okay, maybe games should be considered non-productive. Unless you work for a game company; then it’s your job.
How else would you show an app in multiple categories in a hierarchical menu system?
For what it’s worth, my almost completely stock KDE 6 desktop’s Kickoff launcher only shows KiCad in Science & Math despite the desktop file saying Science;Electronics.
IMO it’s not necessary to remove the other categories; this seems like a misconfiguration or bug locally.
Edit to add: I don’t have an electronics category in my launcher. Is that something you added?
There is a fixed list of main categories. KiCad used to register one main category, Science. The Freedesktop spec says that this is what should be used to determine how the application shows up in a menu, but of course desktop environments are not required to follow the spec.
The other categories (e.g. Electronics) are not main categories. It looks like your DE is choosing to show the application once in every primary category that the additional categories fall under. I would call this a bug (or just a design decision that you don’t agree with) with your DE’s application launcher menu.
Yes. There’s a package you can install that adds other menu categories.
On Ubuntu it’s called “extra-xdg-menus”
Perhaps this is the cause of your issue then?
Whatever they call it, the icon only shows up in one category on my distro’s Application panel: Science & Maths. And I have put it in my Favourites category for quick access also. So, works for me.
The menu system is only hierachical because your system shows it that way. It has nothing to do with KiCAD at all.
Every application in (x)Ubuntu has a “desktop” file associated with it.
Default located in:
/usr/share/applications/
In those files, the application categories are defined.
The Application Menu is built anew after every login by scanning through those files.
So how the Menu looks is up to your OS, not to KiCAD. Capisce?
A bit of both…
Kicad provides the desktop file ( ./resources/linux/launchers/org.kicad.kicad.desktop.in) and in there the categories listed are: Science;Electronics;
The problem is close to GNOME and the FSF where “traditionally” science was one of the 13 categories ( Registered Categories | Desktop Menu Specification). To be compliant to aspects of this specification a desktop environment shall align to the base categories. To be fully compliant it should expand to whatever is listed.
THUS to ensure kicad is guaranteed to appear, science has to be added, to appear to something more informative, electronics is listed. So the real question is… Why isn’t KDE acknowledging the entries from the additional categories area Additional Categories | Desktop Menu Specification
I don’t think it’s a bug.
I use Xubuntu and have some programs shown in different categories. Pretty sure Debian has the same.
I think the title is a misnomer. The base category has to be Science & Math and Electronics is a secondary category. But the DE chooses to display both the base and secondary categories then there will be duplication. Maybe you can turn off this behaviour and display one or the other but not both.
I’m not a Linux user . . . but this all seems a little wrong to me. I wouldn’t categorise KiCad as Maths or Science . . . in my mind it’s firmly Engineering 
perhaps Engineering;Electronics
But looking at the published categories I can see why there is confusion . . . Development ?? Software Development, Personal Development, 35mm Film Development . . . they are adding to the confusion with ambiguity.
There is an explanatory column in that table. The Freedesktop people were trying to name the categories with a single word. You could level the same criticism at any of the other categories. Say Network, you can imagine all the possible meanings now. That table was created eons ago in Internet time.
These are well known problems with taxonomy hierarchies which is why tags or keywords gained popularity.
But as real estate agents here love to say, it is what it is. The real world makes taxonomies wonky, just look at the distribution of titles in the Dewey Decimal System. We have the original 13 base categories, more secondary categories, and another table which is more like tags, to work with.
Some people like no duplication and firm categories. Some like multiple access paths. Chacun à son goût. Me, as long as I can put the apps I use often in Favourites, I’m happy.