autostart spec, round 2!

[Dan Winship]

Vincent Untz wrote:
> Le mercredi 18 octobre 2006, à 14:49, Dan Winship a écrit :
>>         - If a file contains the string "[$i]" on a line by itself
>>           before the "[Desktop Entry]" group, then its contents are
>>           considered immutable, and the startup system will not merge
>>           in the contents of any further directories.
> 
> [$i] is a group header, so let's call it a group header, even if its
> group is empty. Also, I don't think it needs to be before the [Desktop
> Entry] group.

It's technically not a group header, because the desktop entry spec
doesn't allow group names to have "$" in them. But if your desktop file
parser is willing to treat it as a group header, then you can treat it
as a group header in your code.

But it does have to be before the [Desktop Entry] group, to be
compatible with how lockdown works in KDE.

>>> 3. X-KDE-autostart-condition
>> Lubos points out that apps can just toggle the Hidden flag on a per-user
>> basis. This has pros and cons:
...
>> I like it though. Anyone else got comments?
> 
> I think it's useful in some cases (eg, autostarting accessibility
> programs). We can implement this in GNOME without getting it
> standardized if nobody else wants this :-)

Hm... I realize now that I wasn't clear which proposal I meant I liked.
I meant to say that I like Lubos's proposal, because it's much simpler
(once we add an API to make it easy for apps to use).

For the accessibility case; each a11y method would install a .desktop
file with Hidden=true in the system autostart dir, and to enable it, you
just write out a "Hidden=false" to the user autostart dir.

Then again, this would require different .desktop files in the
applications and autostart directories (one with Hidden, one not), so
it's not quite as simple as the Autostart-Condition case.

Maybe we could just have X-GNOME-Autostart-Condition for now, and
recommend using Hidden as the portable method for apps that are likely
to be used under either GNOME or KDE, and we can consider a standard key
later on if it seems like it would be useful.

-- Dan