.desktop files are the GNOME standard way to handle programs and have associated
icons etc. Currently Nautilus doesn't support these, which means there's no way
to have nice executable programs with icons on the desktop, or to drag entries
onto the desktop from the panel (ala gmc). Executing programs out of folders or
the desktop seems a very common feature in almost all file managers, and this
shouldn't be too hard to support.



------- Additional Comments From arlo@workthatmouse.com 2000-09-24 15:45:06 ----

We have our own way of doing this, but we should keep compatibility with 
older standards as well.

Darin, I'm assigning this to you for review.



------- Additional Comments From snickell@stanford.edu 2000-09-24 19:41:57 ----

How do you create them our way? Or can't users?



------- Additional Comments From darin@bentspoon.com 2000-09-25 11:10:11 ----

This is a major missing feature.

Nautilus provides no easy way to make desktop icons for applications, although fixing 
bug 42212 will provide one way -- dragging from the panel -- which is the gmc way that 
Seth mentions here.

You *can* locate the original program, make a link, then use the custom icon 
machinery to give it a nice icon.

I think that completely ignoring the ".desktop" files may be a problem. Sadly I am not 
enough of an expert on how they are used to determine what beyond fixing bug 42212 
is appropriate without further investigation.

One final thing; I'm not sure what Arlo is referring to when he says we have our own 
way of doing this.



------- Additional Comments From arlo@workthatmouse.com 2000-09-25 11:15:42 ----

Don't we have XML files that act as links to files?  I know we do, I used 
them at Linux world to create a link at the Compaq booth, and Ramiro 
used one to launch Dell's keynote.



------- Additional Comments From darin@bentspoon.com 2000-09-25 11:37:15 ----

Answering Arlo's question: We have them, but there is no UI for creating them, nor any 
standard way for applications to create them when installed. So they do represent a 
cool internal feature, but not a solution to the problem mentioned here, unless we add 
something more.



------- Additional Comments From arlo@workthatmouse.com 2000-09-25 11:40:29 ----

It wasn't a question... it was an answer to your question. :-)

Yes, we do need a HI to create them.  I'll do something today.

At some point we have to separate UI from HI.  It would make internal 
communication much easier.



------- Additional Comments From arlo@workthatmouse.com 2000-09-26 16:54:28 ----

I'm not sure how I ended up with this bug.

I'll design a UI for creating .desktop files, but that isn't the same as 
supporting them.

Off to Darin...



------- Additional Comments From bud@eazel.com 2000-09-27 18:25:52 ----

This bug needs to be clarified, but I am moving it to Usable



------- Additional Comments From josh@eazel.com 2000-10-16 13:35:06 ----

I just happened to stumble upon this bug, but I'm gonna' add my two cents
anyway.

The Nautilus way of doing it, called NautilusLinks, are the xml files that Arlo
was referring to, and were used at LinuxWorld.  It was decided (at least I
thought) that these were *not* going to be a user thing.  Currently, You can't
rename them which is *very* wrong, in my opinion, but there was a bug about it,
so the bug was fixed.  

I don't think we need a way to make .desktop files, as they are the old
standard.  I think we need a way to make NautilusLinks, make it where the user
can rename them, *and* have support for old GMC .desktop files.

Josh 



------- Additional Comments From snickell@stanford.edu 2000-10-16 13:46:39 ----

Unless the "old way" was deficient in some manner, its probably not a good idea
to move to a new way just for the sake of doing things differents. The "best"
solution to the bug in the long term is probably URI Links (or a morphed
NautilusLinks, which is probably the same thing).<shrug>



------- Additional Comments From eli@eazel.com 2000-10-16 19:40:34 ----

Batch-assigning QA ownership of remaining bugs to eli@eazel.com



------- Additional Comments From gzr@eazel.com 2000-11-14 11:12:36 ----

Need input from our UI expert before I can attempt to fix.



------- Additional Comments From arlo@workthatmouse.com 2000-11-14 11:27:43 ----

We can talk about this today... I really need to think about something other 
than Services for a change. :-)



------- Additional Comments From daemonc@netscape.net 2000-11-15 12:12:23 ----

Note: .desktop is a shared standard not only for GNOME but for KDE as well.  Not
supporting the standard in favor of doing it your own way will probably not make
you any friends.



------- Additional Comments From gzr@eazel.com 2000-11-15 13:34:38 ----

I am not going to accept this bug until we have a real design.



------- Additional Comments From daemonc@netscape.net 2000-12-06 23:51:28 ----

 Sorry for the additional spam, but one thing that may have been overlooked here
is international issues.  In the two solutions that nautilus is using for
putting icons on the desktop, nautilus links and symbolic links, the text that
appears under the icon is the actual file name of the link.

 This is all well and good, unless the user changes the default language, in
which case I don't think nautilus has a mechanism to change the filename to the
correct text.  The text displayed on .desktop files in GMC is not the filename,
it comes from the translation table contained in the .desktop file.

 This will be important in the future, because vendors who ship nautilus will
want to have a set of default icons that appear on every users desktop,
including things like links to their webpages with their icons (something else
that can be done with .desktop, though not in nautilus as far as I know),
commonly used programs, etc., all of which they will want to be readable in any
language.

 It may be possible to hack all this functionality into nautilus-links, but why?
Why not make use of the established standard?



------- Additional Comments From arlo@workthatmouse.com 2000-12-13 23:19:43 ----

Can't we just support .desktop files?

I'm not sure why I still have this bug.



------- Additional Comments From gzr@eazel.com 2000-12-14 01:37:21 ----

You have it because you are supposed to design a way to create a launcher. That 
is why I keep handing it back to you.



------- Additional Comments From daemonc@netscape.net 2000-12-14 04:27:24 ----

GNOME hacker Havoc Pennington (hp@redhat.com) will soon be publishing an updated
version of the .desktop file spec at www.freedesktop.org. You may want to
contact him if you have any questions about the spec or implementation.



------- Additional Comments From arlo@workthatmouse.com 2001-01-02 17:46:56 ----

This is going to be along the same lines as the "Create Launcher" GMC 
desktop menu item, right?

I've meade a little bit of progress on this.



------- Additional Comments From don@eazel.com 2001-01-10 17:47:00 ----

We're not doing this for 1.0.  When will we actually add this feature?





------- Additional Comments From loban@earthling.net 2001-02-05 14:36:34 ----

I think that setting the target milestone to something after 1.0 is a bad idea.
Many MANY people are unhappy that .desktop files are not supported in any way in
PR3. GMC has code to handle and create .desktop files, so writing code to
handle/create them should not be too difficult. I think for the 1.0 release,
Nautilus should at least try to support all the stuff mentioned at
freedesktop.org. 



------- Additional Comments From eli@eazel.com 2001-02-09 11:28:10 ----

Duane is now the proud owner for Desktop QA.



------- Additional Comments From eli@eazel.com 2001-03-26 11:19:04 ----

SPAAAAAAAAAM! 

(Jon Allen has taken these components; QA Assigning bugs to him.)



------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org 2001-09-09 20:40 -------