RE: "proprietary" vs. polluting (was Re: propriatary question)

[Gleef <gleef capital net>]

On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Fox, Kevin M wrote:
> I am hoping in the future to have KDE read desktop files (they are like the
> same as .kde so it wouldnt be hard) ... then gnome, enlightenment, kde and
> whatever can read the same files in the same place. A standard if you
> will....
> 
> /usr/share/apps
> 
> to say that a .desktop file is a gnome file is not true...
> enlightenment != gnome but enlightenment can read .desktop files as well....
> 
> if you want every program to produce .desktop files, you should have to
> produce them only once.
> Programmers have a hard enough time producing 1 desktop file, let alone .kde
> files, and what have you... 1 file is all that is nessisary.
> 
> "being polite and clean" in this case means to have kde files, gnome files,
> enlightenment files, afterstep files, window maker files, black box files
> ........ you see where I am going.... Sharing this information between all
> programs saves everyone alot of work :)

The trouble is that GNOME's apps directory doesn't just contain the
.desktop files, but it organizes them as well.  I think it would be a good
thing if as many environments as possible can use the same format of
.desktop files, but I don't think we should force each environment to
accept how we organize them.  This would mean that we need to keep our
.desktop files out of the way, directory structure wise.
"$prefix/share/gnome/apps" seems like a good way of doing this.

A non-GNOME but GNOME aware program could fairly easily locate such a
directory, and extract .desktop files for its own use, and organize
them how it wishes.  GNOME can do likewise with other programs.  Yes, we
should all share information, but that doesn't mean we should share
namespace as well.

-Gleef