Daniel F. Kudwien wrote:
This goes out to some maintainers, specifically related to
- Notifications / Messaging - Organic Groups - Panels
Those and related/dependent modules are implementing top-level menu items, e.g.
- admin/messaging - admin/og - admin/panels
in the style of Drupal 4.7, instead of using the new administrative categories and structure we have since Drupal 5.x. This is not only confusing, but also clutters the administrative interface - especially, if Administration menu module is installed.
I, uh, actually am kind of offended at this line, because I actually did most of the work on the patch to create the new admin system and set it up in this manner. Opening with this actually made me inclined to just ignore the thread entirely but because of who you are, you get an answer anyway. But sincerely, this is *not* in the style of 4.7: 1) Panels implements everything necessary to have a block in the new admin system, including the descriptions and functions below it. 2) Panels has several administrative options that, in the normal system, would be kind of scattered and difficult to find. I know this because I originally had set things up that way, and it was frustrating. 3) Panels has a modular nature and keeps getting items added, which would be even more frustrating. 4) Keeping things together would force Panels down to admin/site-building/panels/* -- 4 levels down before it actually gets any information in the URL for itself leaves only 3 more path items before you hit the argument limits in the menu system. And worse, you now have an extra click needed to get to every Panels item, relegating it to a second class administrative system.
I see no reason why it needs to be this way. Clearly, for example, Organic Groups and Panels are both tools to build a Drupal site -- the proper location would thus be below "Site building".
I see no reason why admin_menu can't just cope with this the same way the menu system does.