RH BR74071 (Was: Configuring the Red Hat Linux desktop)

[Owen Taylor]

Waldo Bastian <bastian at kde.org> writes:

> On Sunday 15 September 2002 12:45 pm, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > I guess the question is whether looking up desktop files by
> > filename base is a KDE-specific activity or something that
> > is interesting to other people installing desktop files
> > as well.
> 
> It's the only unique way of identifying a service/application at the moment. 
> The "Name" field of the desktop file gets translated so that isn't very 
> suitable and the path of the desktop file is subject to change when the user 
> rearranges his menu.
> 
> > (I don't see looking up desktop files by filename as something
> > that is particuarly interesting for GNOME at the moment)
> 
> How does GNOME look up .desktop files then? Exclusively based on capabilities 
> via a trader?

GNOME doesn't need to look up .desktop files in general. 
Service information is stored elsewhere (XML files in 
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers.) Applications are started by binary
name. So, the issue really hasn't come up.
 
> > Reasons in favor of my original proposal:
> >
> >  - The "kde-" renames were meant as simply filename renames
> >    to get the files out of the way, and formalizing the
> >    use of that exact string by putting it into kdelibs
> >    seems a little strange.
> 
> I think it's an appropriate prefix so I have no problems with that.
> 
> >  - There is no danger of applications accidentally referring
> >    to the Red Hat filenames instead of the real KDE
> >    service names.
> 
> True.

OK, sounds like we need to come to a decision here. 

To summarize:

 Problem: To avoid filename conflicts, Red Hat needs to rename
   some of the standard KDE desktop files. However, 
   findServiceByDesktopName still needs to work with the
   original names.

 Solution A: When renaming the desktop files, we add a 
   X-KDE-DesktopName field with the original filename,
   and use that when creating a Service object instead
   of the actual filename.

 Solution B: When renaming the desktop files, we always
   do that by prepending "kde-", and we make the 
   findServiceByDesktopName try the the name with kde-
   prepended as a fallback from the specified name.
   
If we can get an opinion about which of these is more 
acceptable for upstream inclusion, I'll see about getting
the appropriate patch written.

Thanks,
                                        Owen