Hidden/Enabled key in autostart spec

[Rodney Dawes]

What I would really like to see is that the autostart stuff can be
merged into the normal desktop files that show up in the menus. In
this case, Hidden should be used to state that it shouldn't appear
in the menus. We could then have another key called Autostart in
the desktop file spec, which specifies whether or not something is
to be automatically started. This would make it much easier to have
add/remove to/from autostart, integrated with the menu system, and
would simplify how ISVs provide autostart files, as they won't have
to provide the same .desktop file multiple times in different paths.

I imagine the reason it isn't being done this way, is due to the
potential performance concerns of loading up the menu tree on every
log-in. We can probably easily resolve this with caching, or some
other way. The panel and/or some other things may be loading up
the menus already anyway, because they need to display them to the
user.

-- dobey


On Fri, 2006-10-27 at 14:21 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In GNOME, we're using a X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled key so we can know
> whether an app with an autostart .desktop file should be started or not.
> 
> I'm not quite sure why we're not using Hidden there. It could be because
> the Hidden key is misnamed or because it can be of some other uses.
> 
> That's why I'm wondering whether we should rename the Hidden key to
> Enabled or add a new Enabled key. Any comments on this?
> 
> Vincent
>