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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    GNOME, .desktop support, nautilus and such
From:       Seth Nickell <snickell () stanford ! edu>
Date:       2001-02-25 23:31:15
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I cannot make ammends for the mistakes of developers in the past, I can
only explain the present situation and try to alleviate the effects of
others mistakes as much as I personally can. As far as I can tell not a
single GNOME application uses the "MimeType" attribute in their .desktop
file. I do not know if this is because:

a) There was some agreement concerning this in the past and whoever made
that agreement failed to pass the information on to developers
b) Although .desktop files are standard, MimeType was an attribute added
by KDE
c) GNOME Developers were utterly delinquent on a massive scale (this
seems improbable, you would think at least *one* application would
handle this!)
d) something else :)

And honestly, although it may be of interest to those who wish to turn
the projects into entities themselves, warring and conflicting or
kissing and making up as the situation demands, I prefer to concentrate
on what I can do today to improve my user's experience. On the other
hand I can understand KDE developer's feeling a sense of betrayal if
either (a) or (c) is the case (and if its (a), its really that
individual/individuals fault(s)). History textbooks may write as they
wish :-) I don't actually care if its a-d, so the argument is mute with
me.

The end result is that KDE and GNOME can and do both display the other's
Applications in their launcher menus, but neither manages to detect the
other's MimeType appropriately. Given that KDE considers an explicit
"find new mime types" command an acceptable solution, I will probably be
able to hack together a program to import .desktop file's MimeType field
into the Nautilus database, providing approximately equivalent .desktop
support for MIME typing to KDE. To be perfectly honest I don't *like*
the centralized "database" (for goodness sakes, its not even structured
XML or something, its plaintext, almost identical to .desktop except its
a bunch in one file rather than seperate files :-/ ). However in the
interests of compatibility it would be good if somebody (either from KDE
or GNOME) wrote a little app that parses the files (its actually 3
files, but you'd only really have to parse one I think to get .desktop
level information) and gets the info to KDE somehow.

Yes, it would be good if we used the MimeType attribute, and I will try
to see what I can do to get this changed for Gnome 1.4 and add as many
to projects as I find time for, but I doubt coverage will be that good
so.... ;-)

-Seth

Andreas Pour wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> As I mentioned in my earlier mail, the Desktop Entry Standard was
> created by KDE and GNOME developers exactly for this purpose.  KDE scans
> for .desktop files in standard places and in addition in
> user-configurable places.  If the GNOME applications have these .desktop
> files they should appear in Konqueror as a result of the scan.  This
> alleviates the need for KDE to distribute GNOME application info (which
> might vary between the various GNOME distributions) and vice versa.
> Also it has the added convenience that programs don't show up unless
> they are actually installed.  This is especially useful when it comes to
> 3rd party apps from Gnome and KDE, which would have their .desktop files
> (application and mimetype) come and go with the application itself.
> 
> One thing Gnome apps should do if they install on a system with KDE is
> run something like:
> 
>   if which kbuildsycoca >& /dev/null ; then
>     kbuildsycoca
>   fi
> 
> Which will re-scan for .desktop files.  If there is an equivalent way to
> activate GNOME scanning please let me know.
> 
> Ciao,
> 
> Dre
> 
> Seth Nickell wrote:
> >
> > I notice Konqueror has almost no GNOME applications registered (in spite
> > of knowing about many non-GNOME applications such as JBuilder, etc), and
> > gmc was just as bad about KDE apps, of course (ok, gmc was just bad all
> > around ;). Is there somebody I could send a list of MIME/types and
> > affiliated applications to so we can all support eachother better?
> > I would be happy to provide whatever info you need. We should make it as
> > painless as possible for users to mix and match environments if that is
> > what they desire (there are key applications on both sides that the
> > other doesn't really have a functional equal on the other side, for
> > example gimp on gnome and killustrator on kde).
> >
> > It is probably not only necessary, but healthy, if users find they can
> > use KDE apps under GNOME and GNOME apps under KDE. Remember that we
> > should be about opening up options, not shutting them down. Rather than
> > squabbling over the relatively tiny linux desktop of today, we can work
> > together and grow Linux on the desktop to the point where there's easily
> > "enough for everyone" ;-)
> >
> > -Seth
> 
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