Re: Window managers and their desktop files

[Thomas Thurman <tthurman gnome org>]

Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
> It seems - since 2.23 - gnome-session now looks for the desktop files
> in the regular $prefix/share/applications dir. This makes sense as
> this way we can have some specialized window managers (like compiz)
> work cross-desktop.

I believe all window managers should work with all desktops.

> I've also noticed that control center still looks
> for them in the old $prefix/share/gnome/wm-properties path.

The .desktop files in "wm-properties" are not very much like the desktop 
files in "applications".  There was a lot of discussion about this on 
<http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=549479>. "wm-properties" 
files MUST contain a group called "Window Manager", and "applications" 
files MUST NOT.  The files in "applications" also need NoDisplay set to 
true, unless you want people invoking the window manager from nautilus, 
which you don't.

What I would like to see, since we now have files in two places, is:

1) "Window Manager" group to be renamed "X-Window Manager", since this 
will make it okay to put it into $prefix/share/applications.

2) control-center to scan $prefix/share/applications as well as 
$prefix/gnome/wm-applications. For each file, control-center would 
accept either "X-Window Manager", or if it didn't find that, "Window 
Manager", or if it found neither, it would ignore the file.

But perhaps someone has a plan for this already.

Thomas

-- 
Thomas Thurman, tthurman at gnome, http://blogs.gnome.org/tthurman
Great gouts of molten lava come surging out of the volcano and go 
cascading back down into the depths.