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Re: Debian packages and freedesktop.org (Gnome, KDE, etc) menu entries



On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 12:28:29PM +0800, Cameron Patrick wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 04:12:58AM +0100, Moritz Moeller-Herrmann wrote:
> | Cameron Patrick wrote:
> | 
> | > On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 01:57:29PM +0000, Henning Makholm wrote:
> | > 
> | > | > Because you gain *nothing*
> | > | 
> | > | Are you claiming that everyone who says that .desktop has technical
> | > | advantages is a liar? These features actually do not exist in the
> | > | desktop format? (It may be so; I have no firsthand information, but it
> | > | does sound far out).
> | > 
> | > Most of the advantages of .desktop that I am aware of are currently
> | > vapourware - i.e. they're in the specs on the freedesktop.org site, but
> | > not yet implemented in KDE and Gnome.  
> | 
> | This is not true. Almost all features are being used in current KDE and to
> | some degree by current GNOME. Could you please give examples?
> 
> The Categories= field (to place .desktop files into menu hierarchies) is
> AFAIK not used at all by KDE, although I think Gnome may support it.
> The freedesktop 'menu' standard (where sub-menus can be generated from
> the categories in the .desktop files, and which also claims to allow
> "legacy" menus to be merged with the new standard) doesn't seem to have
> been adopted yet by anyone.  The worst part, though, is that currently
> both KDE and Gnome store their .desktop files in different places, so
> that a .desktop that is available to KDE (and placed in /usr/lib/applnk)
> won't automatically appear in the Gnome menu, which looks in
> /usr/lib/applications.  I presume that these things are being worked on
> in later releases of KDE and Gnome, but I don't know where to look for
> the current status of their adoption of the freedesktop.org standards.

The above statements are probably true of KDE 3.1 since it doesn't use
the proper /usr/share/applications layout. KDE 3.2 which is due to
be released in about a month does use it. The location Gnome uses is
correct.

> I have also noticed what might be considered as 'abuse' of these
> standards, presumably due to poor implementation of some fields.  For
> example, /usr/share/applications/epiphany.desktop lists its Name as "Web
> Browser"; it should more correctly list its name as "Epiphany" and have
> a GenericName field containing "Web Browser".

I've already reported that, several months ago, to some Gnome people in
#debian-devel, hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Chris

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