Begin forwarded message:
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:14:07 -0700 From: Russ Allbery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: gnome, kde, xfce use non-policy main menu Charles Plessy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I think that Russ is very pessimistic on the quality of the XDG > desktop entry sepcification. It uses a simple syntax and 18 different > keys, only 4 of them being required. Many of the Lintian errors noted > earlier in this thread are related to the desktop menu specification, > which is a separate document. > http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ > http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/ Russ formed his opinion by attempting to write code to the desktop entry specification without additional reference to existing implementations and watching it not work in the real world with real desktop entries. That's the acid test of a standard and the XDG desktop entry specification didn't fare well. The menu specification has other problems, but I am indeed also complaining about the XDG desktop entry specification and specifically saying that the desktop files in Debian do not universally comply with it, that it is unclear and underspecified, and that it needs clarity and additional work to be usable for a Debian policy. I do think that if we had such a standard and additional checks and the intention to enforce it, most of the problems with the desktop files in /usr/share/applications could be relatively quickly cleaned up. (The *.desktop files outside of /usr/share/applications are a whole different problem and are mostly a disaster from a compliance with the specification perspective, but that may not be an issue; most of the ones outside of that tree are legitimately used for internal purposes by different desktop systems and aren't necessarily intended to comply with a spec.) -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- And that's my crabbing done for the day. Got it out of the way early, now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or strangle cute bunnies or something. -- Michael Devore GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C http://gnupg.org No more sea shells: Daniel's Weblog http://cshore.wordpress.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]