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



Hi, Mantas et al...

On Wed, Dec 03, 2003 at 12:50:02AM +0200, AKL. Mantas Kriauciunas wrote:
> Debian has a usability problem - it's hard to start lots of programs, 
> installed from debian packages, because simple users just can't find
> them in menu.
> [...]
> Maybe debian developers should improve debian package making standards
> (Debian policy) and recommend to add Gnome/Kde menu entry for all packages,
> which have Debian menu entry ? Then maintainers will include .desktop
> files, at least after bugreports :)

Good issue. My current sponsor also pointed me to the .desktop files. I
guess I'm not the only one who is more familiar with "menu" entries than
"desktop" entries. Plus it took me a while to get a working .desktop file 
done (whenever I used the suggested category names the icon disappeared
completely). 

IMHO two things need to be done:

a) There must be comprehensive information (like a mini-howto) on how to
	write a desktop file. (I needed three different websites to figure
	out the syntax, the categories and where to put the files.)
b) An example .desktop item should be supplied with the dh_make
   template.

And that isn't just a problem of newbeez. In my experience that's the
most frequently asked question: "I have installed package xyz. What do I
do now?" Isn't that what most of us do? Just install a package and then
"dpkg -L" to see what binaries have been installed?

Just my two cents, though. ;)

 Christoph

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