Bug#484656: debian-policy: .desktop files have are a freedesktop.org standard but not debian policy
Daniel Dickinson <cshore@fionavar.ca> writes:
> .desktop files should probably be Debian policy because they are what
> the window managers expect and it is a cross-distro standard.
Apart from the concerns that Manoj raised, I also found when trying to
write checks for .desktop files for Lintian that the format for .desktop
files is far from standardized. There's a standard available, but people
don't follow it. KDE uses a bunch of other keys, including some not
mentioned in the standard. KDE and GNOME use .desktop files for different
purposes. GnuSTEP does something else entirely with them. And the
category structure in .desktop files is all over the map.
Until window managers really converge on a standard (and I'm hopeful that
we're just seeing the teething pains of one), it's hard for me to see
.desktop files being an attractive thing for Debian to standardize on.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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