Re: GDesktopAppInfo

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 11:27 +0200, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> 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.

What is Spoon?

The risk of adding a specialized thing like a desktop cache to a general
library like glib is that it will by accident cause cache bloat in apps
that don't require the cache, while at the same time not being
aggressive enough on cacheing, and have the special apis needed for the
case of the panel.

Also, I just don't think every gnome application needs to link in the
code that reads the panel menu.

> 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

GAppInfo is already an abstraction and it has an windows implementation
using the registry and the win32 shell apis. However, its an abstraction
of file->app associations, not of the "desktop menu".

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a witless small-town romance novelist who dotes on his loving old ma. 
She's a beautiful Bolivian stripper with only herself to blame. They fight 
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