Identifying desktop menu items

[John Firebaugh]

Hi,

I'm the maintainer of the KDE panel (kicker). I've recently noticed that 
adding support in KDE for the XDG menu specification has caused a regression 
in kicker. Specifically, paths to .desktop files (for example, to identify 
which .desktop file an application launcher button corresponds to) are now 
being stored in configuration files as absolute paths into the 
$prefix/share/applications directory. This is undesired, since we want to 
application launcher button to work even if the prefix changes or a personal 
copy of the .desktop file is created. My question is, what is the preferred 
way to store this information? As paths relative to 
$prefix/share/applications? What are the legacy compatibility implications 
here? What needs to happen in KDE service type classes to expose this 
information?

-John