[Nautilus-list] Re: [GNOME VFS] Re: magic desktop URIs

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Ian McKellar <yakk yakk net au> writes:
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 09:19:42PM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > > >       preferences:  /usr/share/control-center
> 
> The control-center already depends on gnome-vfs, why not put this scheme
> into the control-center.

The eventual plan would be to not require the control center, just
control panels (i.e. you browse to panels in nautilus with
preferences:, then you open them and they are just standalone dialogs).

It looks like people still want a standalone shell thing, but it won't
be "required" in the way current control center is, just an optional
way to access the control panels.

Anyhow, it's a bit academic - the way the VFS module works is that all
6 schemes are in one module, they do the same thing just are rooted at
different actual filesystem directories. So we can't put one in
control-center, one elsewhere, etc.

> 
> > > >       programs:     /etc/X11/applnk + /usr/share/gnome/apps
> 
> I think theres logic in gnome-core/panel/(menu|distribution).c for
> handling the different distro menus too that should possibly be
> integrated.

The VFS module does the merge stuff that the panel does. The idea is
that the panel should use programs: to locate its .desktop files, and
we just keep all the merge logic in the VFS module. Otherwise we have
to keep the two in sync.

> 
> > > >       sysconfig:    /etc/X11/sysconfig
> > > >       serverconfig: /etc/X11/serverconfig
> > > >       starthere:    /etc/X11/starthere
> 
> These aren't on my Debian system. Are they RedHat specific or are
> they going to be installed by GNOME packages? If they're RH specific
> then I would don't mind them going into gnome-vfs so long as they're
> optional at compile-time.  If they're going to be part of GNOME then
> perhaps they should be installed by the GNOME modules that actually
> install files there?

/etc/X11/sysconfig and /etc/X11/serverconfig are equivalent to
/usr/share/control-center but for system and server config
respectively, just moved to /etc because that is IMO more correct.

When I say they are equivalent what I mean is that they are places
where lots of apps may install .desktop files, we won't have a single
module that installs the contents of these directories. i.e. if I
install a tool to configure date and time, then that tool would add
its .desktop file to /etc/X11/sysconfig.

Start Here is a bit different, in that arbitrary apps are not supposed
to stick stuff in there, though they could. We would likely have 
one of the GNOME modules come with the .desktop files for Start Here. 
In RH, at the moment these .desktop files come with Nautilus.

I don't think any of this is Red Hat specific, except to the extent
that we have this in RH at the moment and GNOME may or may not take
the patch. It isn't inherently RH specific in any way.

All three directories are created specifically for the purposes of the
VFS module, they are not things that preexisted on Red Hat.

But again, as mentioned before there's only one VFS module that
implements all 6 URI schemes.

> > > >       favorites:    ~/.gnome/apps
> 
> Sounds great.
> 
> Am I the only person who hates the word "Favourites" to mean
> bookmarks?

Heh. ;-) Just copying the panel here. ;-)
 
> I feel that adding a gnome prefix makes them less useful, but I'm
> still wary of polluting the URI namespace... Oh what the hell... ;-)
> 

Live on the edge!

Havoc