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

[Bruce Sass <bsass@edmc.net>]

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, Chris Cheney wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 01:28:51PM -0700, Bruce Sass wrote:
<...>
> .desktop files are not bloated... period. They include i18n which for
> you is bloat since you obviously can communicate in English.

"not bloated... period", yet you admit the translations are bloat for
someone who doesn't need them.  Can you also accept the X-KDE-* stuff
is bloat for every menu data consumer except KDE (ditto for Gnome
specials), and that in general freedesktop features are bloat for
everyone who doesn't support the freedesktop standard.

> As I mentioned further down in this message Konqueror only uses 159
> bytes when all i18n is stripped from it. I see many debian menu
> files that are larger than this and they don't contain i18n either.

I suspect those files contain more than one menu entry; KDE has a file
per entry, menu uses a file per package which contain multiple menu
entries.

<...>
> If several KDE and Gnome developers got together and rewrote the
> menu-methods for the various WM's would that satisfy you?

No, because it doesn't address the primary concern of (say) a Fluxbox
user needing to process the KDE, Gnome, and freedesktop stuff which
they don't have a use for.

<...>
> > 1 or 2 hundred bytes vs. a couple to few thousand bytes _per_entry_;
> > what percentage of resources that takes depends on the system... it
> > may be a drop in the bucket for KDE and Gnome users, who are likely to
> > have very capable machines, but what about those who don't have the
> > resources to run KDE or Gnome---why should they be stuck with
> > processing useless stuff they likely can't afford and obviously don't
> > want?  The entire menu hierarchy is regenerated everytime a package
> > containing a menu entry is installed or removed.
>
> I call bullshit on this one. desktop files with no i18n are not several
> thousand bytes _pre_entry_.  And the fact that those other WM's don't
> support should be considered a bug not a feature... For example the
> Konqueror .desktop file is 159 bytes with no i18n or 2234 with it. If as
> we suggested earlier the Debian menu format gain i18n support then it
> would be just as big as .desktop (probably actually since Debian has
> very limited i18n support).

Ok, the .desktop file sizes are typically between 1 and 2K---but you
don't have to look too hard to find 3 or 4K .desktop files, and some
of the (admitedly KDE specific) files are over 10K.  Yup, that last
bit is FUD: I fear it is the future of .desktop files, I'm uncertain
they are atypical, and I doubt that 1-2K will be the norm...
especially since the example (/usr/share/applnk/konqueror.desktop) you
are holding up is 3748 bytes and incomplete (only 7 "Name" and over 3
dozen "Comment" items) on my box (unstable, updated daily).

<...>
> > desktop/ can contain the generic .desktop data (translations and
> > features common to all .desktop aware menu consumers), the gnome and
> > kde dirs would contain the bits specific to them (X-KDE-*, etc.)
>
> Hahaha, you do realize how much extra effort that would entail? It would
> be much simpler for the Gnome and KDE maintainers to just rewrite all
> the converters and the menu package itself than to keep that up to date.

Maybe I don't (although nobody has torn apart my most recent post
regarding the scheme)... please enlighten me.


- Bruce