KDE/Gnome inconsistency in associations

[Rodney Dawes]

If you replace the & with an underscore _ character, do you get the
exact opposite problem, and the accelerator is set in GNOME? If so,
I'd say they are both broken. The problem is that in GTK+, _ is used
to specify an accelerator, and in QT, a & is used. So, when you
create a menu item with the special character, it gets misinterpreted.

This is really a per-toolkit problem, I suspect. If the special
character were ^, the same problem would presumably still exist, were
you to put it in the name string. I would test that GNOME isn't broken
when using _ also though, first.

If so, you need to file bugs against both menu implementations, I
suppose. Perhaps the spec also needs to say that the strings need to
be escaped somehow.

-- dobey


On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 12:29 +0100, Francois Gouget wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have noticed an inconsistency in the way KDE and Gnome treat 
> ampersands in associations names. Here's an example to make things 
> concrete. The attached file defines the application name as:
> 
> Name=Ampersand+foo &foo
> 
> If you put it in $HOME/.local/share/applications you will get the 
> following entries in 'Open with...':
> 
>   * In Gnome 'Ampersand+foo &foo'
>     That is the ampersand is not interpreted and is left as is.
> 
>   * In KDE 'Ampersand+foo foo' plus a keyboard shortcut for the letter 'f'.
>     That is, KDE interpreted the ampersand and thus removed it from the 
> application name. To avoid that, one must double the ampersand. But then 
> one gets '&&' in Gnome.
> 
> The Desktop Entry Specification says nothing on the subject. Hence the 
> question:
> 
> Which of KDE or Gnome is right?
> 
>