On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 12:28:29PM +0800, Cameron Patrick wrote: > On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 04:12:58AM +0100, Moritz Moeller-Herrmann wrote: > | Cameron Patrick wrote: > | > | > On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 01:57:29PM +0000, Henning Makholm wrote: > | > > | > | > Because you gain *nothing* > | > | > | > | Are you claiming that everyone who says that .desktop has technical > | > | advantages is a liar? These features actually do not exist in the > | > | desktop format? (It may be so; I have no firsthand information, but it > | > | does sound far out). > | > > | > Most of the advantages of .desktop that I am aware of are currently > | > vapourware - i.e. they're in the specs on the freedesktop.org site, but > | > not yet implemented in KDE and Gnome. > | > | This is not true. Almost all features are being used in current KDE and to > | some degree by current GNOME. Could you please give examples? > > The Categories= field (to place .desktop files into menu hierarchies) is > AFAIK not used at all by KDE, although I think Gnome may support it. > The freedesktop 'menu' standard (where sub-menus can be generated from > the categories in the .desktop files, and which also claims to allow > "legacy" menus to be merged with the new standard) doesn't seem to have > been adopted yet by anyone. The worst part, though, is that currently > both KDE and Gnome store their .desktop files in different places, so > that a .desktop that is available to KDE (and placed in /usr/lib/applnk) > won't automatically appear in the Gnome menu, which looks in > /usr/lib/applications. I presume that these things are being worked on > in later releases of KDE and Gnome, but I don't know where to look for > the current status of their adoption of the freedesktop.org standards.
The above statements are probably true of KDE 3.1 since it doesn't use the proper /usr/share/applications layout. KDE 3.2 which is due to be released in about a month does use it. The location Gnome uses is correct. > I have also noticed what might be considered as 'abuse' of these > standards, presumably due to poor implementation of some fields. For > example, /usr/share/applications/epiphany.desktop lists its Name as "Web > Browser"; it should more correctly list its name as "Epiphany" and have > a GenericName field containing "Web Browser". I've already reported that, several months ago, to some Gnome people in #debian-devel, hopefully it will be fixed soon. Chris
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