Re: Reducing the number of special uris in gnome

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

Sunnanvind Fenderson wrote:

> James Henstridge <james daa com au> writes:
>  
>
> > Both KDE and GNOME use .desktop files.  This is an agreed upon
> > standard, available from FreeDesktop.org:
> >   http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-entry-spec.html
> >    
>
> Yeah, I know. They're very nice and they're still useful, but they
> don't do the exact same thing as debian menu entries (unless I'm
> mistaken). Debian has a policy of in which menu category an
> application should go, with very little overlap. That's what I missed
> in gnome 1.4.
>
> (I'm going to do a new install of gnome 2 soon and take a look on this
> in more detail.)
>  
In GNOME 2.0, we have a Categories line in the desktop file listing a 
number of keywords that describe the application.  There is then a 
vfolder-info file that describes the menu structure.  Each submenu 
defined in the vfolder-info file has a set of conditions used to select 
what items appear (for instance, the games submenu selects menu items 
with the "Application" and "Game" keywords).

> > Some portions of the Debian menu layout look a bit suspect (a submenu
> > listing the window managers installed on the system?).
> >    
>
> You don't like that? Fair enough.
Well, if window managers should be visible anywhere in the menus, it 
should be in a window manager selection control panel.  I can't see how 
you would start a new window manager in such a way that it will work in 
all cases.  Most window managers don't handle new WMs acquiring the 
window manager selection properly (in which case they are supposed to 
exit).  Exec()'ing the new WM (so that it replaces the old WM) won't 
work if some process other than the WM is displaying the menus.

James.

--
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