Rex Dieter:
>> It goes both ways. For example, Gnome doesn't support the
>> GenericName part of the desktop-spec, whereas KDE in general doesn't
>> offer Comment keys.
BeartoothHOS:
> I have no idea what that jargon refers to.
If you look at various something-or-other.desktop files, you can get a
grasp of what the contents of them are supposed to do. Just looking at
one or two of them mightn't help. Unfortunately, various applications
mis-use them (not just some of the desktop environments that read them,
but also some of the applications providing their .desktop files).
Name= really should contain the actual name of the program.
GenericName= should have a name that generically describes the item,
but could apply to any other program that does the same task.
Comment= should have a useful comment providing info about the item.
An example:
Name=Firefox
GenericName=Web browser
Comment=Browse the internet and read web pages
And your window manager could make a menu out of the provided data,
showing some or all of that as you see fit. You should be able to
imagine how that might be presented, with the name in the menu, and the
rest in a pop-up, for example. Or perhaps, the application name plus
the generic name in the menu, and the comment in a pop up.
Some people only want the names, as that's all they need. Unfamiliar
users may need the whole lot, particularly with some the weirdly named
applications, or when there are more than one application that can do
the same thing. And perhaps on a system with only a small set of
programs, one per task, it's more appropriate to show unfamiliar users
just "web browser" rather than mention the program name, at all.
But users should have the option about that, somewhere. We have other
options about how the menus are displayed, in a control panel, but they
omit a useful thing like that (show name and/or generic name and/or
comments).
A bad example (taken from Fedora 11):
/usr/share/applications/redhat-audio-player.desktop
Name=Audio Player
Comment=Play Ogg Vorbis and other audio files
*That* name should really be the generic name, because that's what it is
("audio player" is a generic description). In this case, there actually
isn't a generic name section in the file. And the "name" should say
XMMS, to let the user know they'll be starting up XMMS, rather than
something else.
*That* desktop file isn't a generic start my user's preferred audio
player file, it's a start the xmms program desktop file. A desktop file
for something like that (where the user has picked their preferred
applications, or the installation has preset default ones), could be
something like:
(Not actually have a Name= section)
GenericName=Audio player
Comment=Play audio files with default/preferred programme
A whiz-bang desktop interface could insert the name of the actual
program into the comment or name section, customising it in a
user-friendly manner.
--
fedora-list mailing list
fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
