"Hello Word!" example for XFCE menus?

I'm sure this is a common question, but I couldn't find anything here (never found a forum system with a useful search function), and nothing I found elsewhere on the web looked like what I would call tutorial material. By "tutorial" I mean something that doesn't assume the reader has already worked with the menu system. Stuff I can't find:

• the basics of how the system is put together
• how desktop and directory files are related
• a "Hello World" example
• complete example of how to add items to existing menus, create new menus
• where all the myriad menus on my system are defined

I would like to modify my menus. I can't believe how many there are, and how much they overlap (even within a single menu)! I have the following:

• xfce panel (title: openSUSE)
• left mouse menu over root window (title Quick Menu)
• right mouse over root window (title: Start)

Searching in /usr/share/applications and ~/.config/menus for files containing those titles, I found nothing.

If nothing else, I'd like a "Hello World" example. I tried creating a file called zenity.desktop in ~/.config/menus that has this content:


I've executed xfce4-panel -r but don't see this menu item appear anywhere in any of my multitudinous menus.

Looking at this page:

http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu#questions

I tried creating ~/.config}/menus/xfce-applications.menu as it described. All that did was wipe out the panel menu. (At least I know it pays attention to that directory!)

I don't want to mess with /usr/share/applications. I just want to do my own thing and not stomp on the system stuff installed by our admins. Any pointers appreciated.

Finally, my apologies for the rather demanding nature of this post. I've tried to tackle this problem on my own a few times over the past six months, and every time I have come up empty. I'm writing in a rather frustrated state of mind.