Re: Icons and instructions for the FreeDesktop menu.
On Wed, Jan 17, 2007, Charles Plessy wrote:
> am I wrong or one can have foo.png in foo.desktop, and foo.xpm in
> foo.menu? If upstream does not provide an xpm icon, the "convert"
> command of the imagemagick package can easily create one at build time.
My point is that I shouldn't have to maintain both, or to run convert
each time this is necessary.
> Also, I have the impression that the Debian menu system is not a
> reinvented wheel, but an old wheel kept in the car in case it is needed.
"Reinventing the wheel" was perhaps not the best way to describe the
problem; I wanted to point out that the Debian meny system has
antediluvian requirements and duplicates the functionality of the GNOME
menu for me. I suggested the Debian menu system would handle or import
the data from the .desktop files instead of requiring me to do it
manually.
> Both systems are not in competition in my opinion.
No, but in some use cases they are mutually exclusive. The Debian menu
system is completely useless to me, and I expect to most GNOME and KDE
users. I'm not saying we should drop it since I can't claim it's
useless for everybody. I am saying that the fact it is useless to me
and to most of the users of the GNOME packages I maintain doesn't call
for a good maintenance of the menu entries of these packages; and I am
proposing technical ways to solve this.
> Lastly, as a maintainer of packages wich are not part of a
> FreeDesktop-compatible suite, I would welcome instructions about where
> and when registering an application in the FreeDesktop menu. Or even
> better, a policy.
There are specs on the .desktop file format on the freedesktop.org
website. I don't think we need to have a policy in Debian to map it
one to one, nor should we impose all packages to ship .desktop files:
it would cause the exact same problem I'm complaining about.
Beside, if I understand the point of the menu-xdg package, it will do
the job of exposing your menu entries (I suppose with approximations
and ugly icons) to FreeDesktop compliant desktop environments.
> Not being a user of this menu, I have a hard time guessing what users
> expect.
This probably means that you understand my position on Debian menu. :)
--
Loïc Minier <lool@dooz.org>
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