Re: [Nautilus-list] desktop-vfs-method

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Frederic Crozat <fcrozat mandrakesoft com> writes:
> -gnome-vfs (desktop-vfs-method) from Redhat folks

This doesn't parse desktop files at all, it just remaps their locations.
 
> And maybe also, be more compliant this .desktop spec (freedesktop.org)
> since it appears we are not using/parsing all available keywords in
> .desktop..

The reason we need a new parser for Nautilus is that the one in
gnome-dentry is misdesigned; it's bloated, it only works on files, it
can only load a limited set of tags from the spec, etc. We need a
"streaming" parser (like SAX instead of DOM) for most uses, such as
Nautilus and the panel. But also we have to be able to modify a file
and write it out again preserving order and comments.

I would like to have a small program that "validates" desktop files by
checking for spec conformance. Particular issues:
  - it should whine about NO_XALF bullshit gnome-core does
  - it should whine about icons that are not filenames (KDE does this)
  - it should whine about extension sections or keywords not prefixed with X-
  - it should whine about bad encoding
  - it should whine about missing fields that should be there

But, I haven't had time to write it. If someone wants to do so that
would be excellent.

I think George was planning to do a parser for the panel eventually,
but I'm sure he wouldn't object if someone else did it first.

Havoc