[Portland] Summarize current plan?

[Dan Kegel]

On 3/14/06, Lubos Lunak <l.lunak at suse.cz> wrote:
> On Monday 13 March 2006 15:29, Jeremy White wrote:
> > >  You can and you or anybody else are free to work on that, it's just that
> > > this is not the point of DAPI. Installing a menu entry is fairly simple,
> > > you just read the spec and basically just put a .desktop file somewhere
> > > as the spec says. It's supposed to work with any desktop and you in fact
> > > don't even need a desktop running at the install time.
> >
> > Go read the thread I posted.  It's not as easy as you think; the
> > spec is imprecise when you're doing root installs.
> [...]
>  Short summary: The menu spec doesn't work on Mandriva, Kubuntu has a bug,
> some desktops doesn't support the spec and the spec is imprecise in some
> details, so in practice it doesn't work in 100% cases.
>
>  Now, what exactly would you like to happen here? That Mandriva screws up the
> spec is their fault, nothing here can change that and it can happen with
> anything that somebody intentionally breaks it or ignores it. Kubuntu has a
> bug, well, bugs happen and will keep happening, again nothing you can do
> about that here. Some desktops don't support the spec at all (and you admit
> most of your problems come from that), so, what exactly do you expect to
> happen on this list that changes their mind?
>
>  You have a spec for this and the spec is supposed to work, so it's a solved
> problem. No amount of bitching is going to solve the things listed above, at
> least as long as you complain to those who're not guilty.
>
>  As for the last item, the spec needing some clarifications/fixes/whatever, if
> you really could have spent man months on it, why didn't you instead try to
> spend noticeably less time on fixing the spec and doing what'd be necessary?
> It's not like you're not allowed to.

Perhaps that's one thing commandline app to create menu items
could add -- it would use the spec, sure, but it would also work around
any rough spots.

I don't think Jeremy's complaining.  He's just pointing out that he,
an ISV, is having trouble, that DAPI doesn't address his problems,
and he's trying to share the code he uses to get around the problems.
Sure, he's thinking about a very small problem, one that seems trivial
and mundane to you, but that's a *good* thing -- it means we might be
able to come up with a solution in short order.
- Dan