Recommended keys in ‘foo.desktop’ files

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Howdy all,

I've noticed a great deal of ‘foo.desktop’ files in Debian don't have
the ‘StartupNotify’ entry. This entry is optional, and (for backward
compatibility) defaults to the value ‘false’.

The value for this entry defaults to “false”, which though unfortunate
<URL:http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2002-December/msg00060.html>
means that every program the user launches must either declare this
entry with a value of “true” explicitly, or leave the user wondering why
the program hasn't launched yet.

Therefore, while the standard is correct not to mark the ‘StartupNotify’
key as “required”, I think every *current* ‘foo.desktop’ file should
have this key, explicitly declaring its value.

Are there any other “recommended” keys like this: that, though the key
is optional, it is best to specify it anyway? I would like to submit a
patch to Lintian to start flagging ‘foo.desktop’ files that are missing
such “recommended” keys.

-- 
 \     “Unix is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, |
  `\    Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus.” —Peter |
_o__)                                                        H. Coffin |
Ben Finney