utf8 in name= and comment= items of .desktop files

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

 Hi, 

 People say that it's decided to use utf8 for name= and comment= items in
.desktop files in Gnome2. I think support for *reading* these properties in
.desktop files would be handy to have in gnome-1.4, using the following
alrogithm:

 get the string, try to treat it as it was in utf8, if conversion fails, treat
the string as it's in native encoding of the locale.

 When saving .desktop files, still save them in system charset (various menu
generators and other software still assumes that gnome uses native encoding
for these items.

 This apporach will allow to support existing gnome .desktop files, new
(utf8-containing) .desktop files, and KDE .desktop files. This is rather
cruicial functionality for people using non-latin1 encodings since KDE menus
are unreadable in foot menu if locale's encoding is not utf8.

 I can make a patch to implement all this if it will be included in gnome-1.4
(provided that patch won't have technical flaws).

 What do you think about this?

 Best regards,
  -Vlad