Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

> You mean the specification that is followed mostly in the breech by
> actual implementations and to which KDE at least has a whole ton of
> extensions?

Or in the breach, even.  Although in the breech does sum up my opinion on
parts of it.  :)

Some examples:

http://lintian.debian.org/tags/desktop-entry-contains-unknown-key.html

(and that doesn't include the ones that aren't listed in the standard but
that Lintian has just given up on because they're so widespread, like
Actions)

http://lintian.debian.org/tags/desktop-entry-invalid-category.html

(and that doesn't count Application and GNUstep, which are also invalid
but which I just gave up on since they're used all over the place)

http://lintian.debian.org/tags/desktop-entry-lacks-main-category.html
http://lintian.debian.org/tags/desktop-entry-uses-reserved-category.html

And that's just the stuff that Lintian happens to check for.  I shudder to
think what the results would be if Lintian started doing a complete syntax
check against the standard, looking for things like ending list
attributes with a semicolon the way they're required to be.

Not to mention that, as standards go, the XDG menu and desktop standard is
a rather poor one.  It's not very well-written, it's not very clear, it's
huge (tons of different keys with different meanings, sometimes
cryptically explained), and the menu category list in particular is
horribly scattershot and confusing.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>