Re: .desktop

[Ulrik Sverdrup <ulrik sverdrup gmail com>]

2009/11/24 Chmouel Boudjnah <chmouel chmouel com>:
> ~/Desktop the default desktop folder showing in Gnome and KDE it's a
> standard by the freedesktop crowd :
>
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/


This is very confusing. Now you mention ~/Desktop which is the folder
whose contents are spread over the desktop background. But you link to
the desktop entry specification (which I have read carefully) which is
about defining application and localtion description files. Like.
gedit.desktop


>
> Basically when you have a desktop on Gnome or KDE and you have a
> background desktop every icon you see on the desktop are .desktop file
> due application.

What do you mean? You can have programs on the desktop, say, I create
vim.desktop and put it in ~/Desktop/vim.desktop  . Now I have a
clickable application icon on my desktop background. But not all files
there are like that -- there are files, folders and symlinks in my
~/Desktop as well.

>
> For now kupfer (via gio) parse only the standard offered application
> not the customize ones (ie: the one on the Desktop).
>

This is not true. I'm not so happy with it, but Kupfer reads all
.desktop files it finds, in any included catalogs! (by default, ~ and
~/Desktop)

Why this is not optimal is that there is no indication that the
program came from a file. And it might give you duplicate applications
-- if you duplicate the ones in the normal application directories.

Let me emphasize -- if you add ~/  as a directory in the catalog
(there by default in Kupfer), found .desktop files will be parsed
(ConstructFileLeaf, object.py, line 312).

The best way to add custom applications to kupfer is to define
.desktop files and add in ~/.local/share/applications