Re: GDesktopAppInfo

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 15:51 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 15:46 -0400, Dan Winship wrote:
> > Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > > Do many apps really require creating launchers
> > > from arbitrary desktop files? What is the typical usecase of that?
> > 
> > Well, the panel in multiple places (main menu, panel launchers, run
> > dialog). The various panel add-ons/replacements (the Novell main menu
> > and app launcher, Gimmie, deskbar, alacarte, etc). Nautilus, for
> > creating launchers for dropped URLs/apps, and launching them later.
> > Gnome-session for autostart. Beagle, for launching apps in search
> > results. And then there's xfce-panel, Thunar, etc, etc.
> > 
> > In the realm of the not-yet-deployed, my EggSMClient code uses the app's
> > desktop file's Exec key to set the XSMP RestartCommand. That also led to
> > a discussion of having a gtk_set_desktop_file() or
> > gtk_application_set_desktop_file() method to call at startup, which
> > would feed EggSMClient the data it needed, plus it could call
> > g_set_application_name() and gtk_window_set_default_icon_name(), and
> > possibly do other setup based on loadable modules, like initializing the
> > bug-buddy signal handlers if the .desktop file includes
> > X-GNOME-Bugzilla- keys, etc.
> 
> Yeah, there is a clear need for this when implementing the Gnome
> desktop. But its sort of unix specific, so maybe it doesn't have to be
> in the very low levels of the stack. OTOH, its not really a large piece
> of code, especially given GKeyFile.
> 
non-GUI apps might need it also, like the new documentation indexer
(Spoon -> http://live.gnome.org/Yelp/Spoon). In fact, it would be great
if this GDesktopAppInfo implemented a .desktop cache, which is much
needed for gnome-main-menu and, probably, for spoon.

Of course, it's still unix-specific, as you say, so why not have an
implementation for that, on Windows, that reads the Start menu? Not sure
if that would work
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>