Icon parameters in *.desktop files

[Alexander Larsson]

On Fri, 2005-06-24 at 10:31 -0400, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-06-23 at 21:42 +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > For each application, you would have to search through all available
> > icons to see which ones are suitable.
> 
> No. With the Provides method, the implementation should just set up
> aliases in memory and store that in the cache. The actual code for
> parsing a comma separated list would be about the same whether it is
> in the .desktop file parser, or in the icon theme parser. It would
> probably actually be slower in the .desktop file side, since then it
> would have to request every icon in the list, until it finds one,
> while with the provides/aliases method, it can just make one request.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Consider the case of an app (file manager or something) that wants to
show one desktop file. To pick the right icon you really need to read
all files in the current icon theme, as any of them could have a line in
it that says to use this icon for this particular desktop file. Reading
all these files is a horrible performance problem.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl at redhat.com    alla at lysator.liu.se 
He's a leather-clad zombie stage actor haunted by memories of 'Nam. She's a 
supernatural wisecracking cab driver with a flame-thrower. They fight crime!