Re: 3rd party .desktop files

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2002 at 07:29:39PM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> You could make a "desktop file authoring tool" but don't you think
> it's overkill for a 10-line Key=value file?
> 
> Anyhow I thought they were just supposed to install them wherever
> desktop files go. Though I think it might be sensible to support a
> separate location for OS-supplied .desktop files vs. ISV .desktop
> files, i.e. have the panel look in two directories, just to 
> remove any hint of namespace issues.

This is quite possible with the current vfolder implementation.  You can
specify as many directories in the vfolder file as we want.  The default
location is simply /usr/share/applications (or some such I think)

> > A couple of us in Sun were also worried by the fact that gnome-core
> > contains a bunch of conditional launchers [2]. These should be installed
> > by the individual applications, and although it seems great to have the
> > idea of having menu items for applications that haven't in the past
> > created .desktop files, it could create potential headaches with pkg
> > registries?
> 
> It's broken for gnome-core to come with .desktop files for other
> apps. .desktop files are standard, KDE also uses them.
> 
> Shipping with the files for other apps just results in duplicate
> entries in the menus - we have to remove these things from gnome-core
> in Red Hat to avoid duplicates, because the third-party apps have
> since added their own .desktop file.

Well think about this:  A separate package that comes with conditional
.desktop files that are placed in

/usr/share/conditional-applications/

That's added BEFORE the /usr/share/applications in the .vfolder-info
file that we ship.  Then, once you install a .desktop file with the
same filename in /usr/share/applications, it will simply override the
one in /usr/share/conditional-applications

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
                       -- Ashleigh Brilliant