Re: [Nautilus-list] Creating Launchers with Nautilus. Potensial patch.

[Gaute Lindkvist <lindkvis stud ntnu no>]

> > Basically, you have to write the file somewhere else, and make sure that
> > the vfolder specifications pick up the directory you write to.
>
> Surely it's easy enough to save any modifications to somewhere in a user's
> .gnome directory, and read that dir along with the others? (Should users
> ever be able to modify 'system' .desktop files? I wouldn't think so, but
> there could be a good reason for them to somewhere.)
>

Ok. I've figured out how to do it. There is a useritem-directory specified
in .gnome2vfolders/applications.vfolder-info.
Anything I put in this folder, will be merged into the dirs, based on
"Categories" specified in the desktop-file.

However, this only works for a few subfolders of Applications. For
instance, applications:///Internet won't accept user created desktop
files. applications:///Accesories will. I have no idea why there is a
difference.

In addition, me creating this workaround does nothing for helping to move
desktop-files from one place to another in the hierarchy via drag and
drop. This is still broken. Most likely because this doesn't really handle
vfolders either.

The correct way will probably be to implement this support into whatever
common library these cases use, instead of a workaround for each case.

This is beyond my skills at this point.

It is however a really critical issue, because Gnome 2 is extremely broken
if there is a release without a functioning menu-editor.
I cc'ed this to desktop-devel-list, because if this isn't fixable before
Gnome 2.0, there need to be an alternative menu-editor.

To summarize for those who haven't followed the entire discussion:
1. I've created a patch that lets Nautilus create launcher-files.
2. gnome_desktop_item_save() does not support vFolders, which is used by
the menu-system, so I started to look at a work-around.
3. I have a workaround that seems exceptionally hacky, bad and silly, but
sort of works for some cases. My workaround is a function
"gnome_desktop_item_safe_vfolder()".
4. The Right Way [tm] is probably to just implement vFolder support into
gnome_desktop_item_save() or a lower layer that is common between this,
and drag and dropping to the applications:/// folder.

Gaute