On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 09:23:42AM -0700, Craig Dickson wrote:
> > Just to give an example what everybody is talking about, here is a
> > snippet from the pan.desktop file (stripped by a few translations):
> >
> > [Desktop Entry]
> > Name=Pan
> > Name[da]=Pan nyhedslæser
> > Name[de]=Pan
> > Name[es]=Pan
> > Comment=Pan, a Newsreader
> > Comment[da]=Værktøj til læsning af nyhedsgrupper
> > Comment[es]=Lector de noticias Pan
> > Exec=pan
> > Icon=pan.png
> > Terminal=0
> > Type=Application
> >
> > Quite easy to understand IMO.
>
> Is this just for an icon on the desktop, or an entry in a menu? I don't
> see anything that indicates where this goes in a menu hierarchy.
Yes, both.
A .desktop file lives in a directory tree. Its location in the tree
defines where you see it in the menu. A snippet of Tree output for
/usr/share/gnome/apps:
|-- Applications
| |-- AbiWord.desktop
| |-- Mozilla-editor-snapshot-gtk2.desktop
| |-- Mozilla-editor.desktop
| |-- gcdmaster.desktop
| `-- gcombust.desktop
|-- Development
| |-- devhelp.desktop
| `-- glade.desktop
:
It's a very simple format with lots of flexibility. And a .desktop can be
dragged right to a Gnome or KDE3 panel or desktop - this is a good thing
IMO.
We also have a couple of options for update-menus in the case of KDE and
Gnome - probably we would use /usr/share/menu for these things. Either
the DEs can be pointed at these menus (not unreasonably) or a symlink tree
can be created by update-menus. The latter allows more flexibility when
deciding where things appear in the menu - submenus could be collapsed if
the parent menu has few options, KDE/Gnome applications could be preferred
under their respective platforms, that sort of thing. This is after all
what hints were originally intended for.
I don't think Gnome or KDE would reject intelligent patches for making
their internal menu systems able to do this sort of thing, but that's a
little more work.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@bluecherry.net> Sooner or later, BOOM!
<Knghtbrd> "... you will more than likely see all kinds of compiler
warnings scrolling by on the screen. These are normal and can
be safely ignored."
<LordHavoc> Knghtbrd: is that a note attached to some M$ code?
<Knghtbrd> No, it's a note about a bunch of GNU stuff.
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