Alacarte adds the following lines to the start of a menu: <Menu> <Name>Applications</Name> <MergeFile type="parent">/etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu</MergeFile> <DefaultLayout inline="false"/> </Menu> The DefaultLayout node seems to prevent the MergeFile from loading, because if I remove the DefaultLayout node, the menu is properly shown in the panel.
Marking as a blocking bug, it might be annoying for users and probably easy to fix.
Which version of Alacarte have you tried this with? I just tried 0.13.2 and when I e.g. move the Graphics menu into Accessories, it creates a new applications.menu but WITHOUT <DefaultLayout inline="false"/>. It's actually Alacarte's fault. The menu specification does not allow empty <DefaultLayout> elements. It says: Each <Layout> or <DefaultLayout> element shall have exactly one <Merge type="all"> element or it shall have exactly one <Merge type="files"> and exactly one <Merge type="menus"> element. An exception is made for a completely empty <Layout> element which may be used to indicate that the default-layout should be used instead. So, no empty <DefaultLayout> elements. The spec doesn't mention how multiple <DefaultLayout> elements are to be treated. Are they supposed to be merged? Are they consolidated so that only the last one survives? It's not specified. But I assume that only the last one should be used if there are more than one. In that case, an empty <DefaultLayout> in the edited menu will override the <DefaultLayout> of the original applications.menu, and the menu will be completely empty. I can add a workaround for this by adding <Merge type="all"> to empty <DefaultLayout> elements. But I'm pretty convinced that this not a bug in garcon.
Workaround added in master (using <Merge type="menus"/> + <Merge type="files"/>): commit b66e39c727817d6ce6cc4de89d3caeee643008fc Author: Jannis Pohlmann <jannis@xfce.org> Date: Sat Dec 4 15:00:18 2010 +0100 Add workaround to fix empty <DefaultLayout> elements (bug #6882). For more information see my comment on the bug on http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6882#c2
Please let me know about the alacarte version and the steps to reproduce the appearance of <DefaultLayout inline="false"/>, even if this bug is now closed.