Re: character encoding in .desktop files

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com> writes:

> How can we change .desktop files to use UTF-8 encoding? What encoding
> do they currently use? What compatibility concerns will there be if we
> change the encoding between GNOME 1 and GNOME 2?

The desktop entry spec (www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-entry-spec)
says that the first key should be:

Encoding: Legacy-Mixed

 or:

Encoding: UTF-8

A quite accurate way of autodetecting for legacty desktop files that
don't comply with this is to read the entire desktop file into memory
and validate it as UTF-8. If it is all valid UTF-8, then it is almost
certainly a UTF-8 desktop file.

My plan of attack would be:
 
 - Make xml-i18n-tools write out the encoding lines.
 - Use UTF-8 desktop files for GNOME 2, since the standard only
   requires that implementations support UTF-8.
 - Add code for reading Legacy-Mixed desktop files to GNOME 2,
   for desktop entries we don't distribute.
 - Patch libgnome1 to handle UTF-8 desktop files as well as possible ...
   which probably means "properly on systems that have reasonable
   iconv and nl_langinfo, no translations for other systems".

I don't think people will generally be using a gnome1 panel or
nautilus with gnome2 apps anyways.

Regards,
                                        Owen