Re: .desktop files (particularly if your app is in the extras release)

[jrb redhat com]

Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu> writes:

> I would like to strongly encourage package maintainers who's
> applications will be included in the GNOME 1.4 release to update your
> .desktop files to include more information than they currently do.
> Specifically, it would be a Good Thing if everyone added a MimeType=
> entry, but I would like to encourage application developers to read the
> spec (the only copy I know of is stored at KDE, but the spec was a joint
> effort) and try to support this seemingly forgotten standard:
> 
> http://webcvs.kde.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/kdelibs/kio/DESKTOP_ENTRY_STANDARD?rev=1.9
> 
> Why? First of all adding a MimeType tag will get your app "registered"
> with Konqueror and the rest of KDE for opening files of that type. This
> means its easier for users to mix and match GNOME and KDE applications,
> a Good Thing unless you are interested in political maneuvering.
> Secondly its generally a good idea to support standards, particularly if
> we agreed to them with KDE long ago and still have failed to support
> them. Making negotiations and agreements towards interoperability means
> jack-shit if we don't actually implement the agreements (and KDE has in
> this case) ;-)
> 
> (the other thing I am wondering is why the .desktop spec is not on
> www.freedesktop.org ?)

The spec was never finished, mostly because of the mime stuff.  We
didn't like putting mime stuff in the .desktop file because it fuzzily
combined two logically distinct operations -- defining a mime type for
the mime-system, and setting a handler for an action on them.

For example, many gnome applications may be able to handle the cool new
format: image/x-splufty.  However, you only want to define the icon it
uses, file extensions, regexp etc in one place (and in general, you want
to let GNOME do it if there's no obvious one source.)  Then, you want to
let applications define actions (ie. gsplufty-view can do the 'view'
action on the file, KSpluftyEdit can do the 'edit' action...)

Anyway, I don't know what the state of the 'standard' is right now, or
what the Nautilus guys have done with the mime system...  But that's the
background behind it, anyway.

Thanks,
-Jonathan


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