Send to spec (was: Re: [New] Desktop Preferred Applications Specification)

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:53:11 +0200
Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Am Dienstag, den 09.06.2009, 01:44 +0100 schrieb Bastien Nocera:
> > On Tue, 2009-06-09 at 02:24 +0200, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> > > Am Sonntag, den 07.06.2009, 16:28 +0100 schrieb Bastien Nocera: 
> > <snip>
> > > > Yes, but we'd still be missing metadata to tell us how to
> > > > construct the commands to launch those mailers with attachments.
> > > 
> > > Why not adopt Xfce's approach? Something like:
> > > X-XFCE-Commands=
> > > X-XFCE-CommandsWithParameter=
> > 
> > Because that's overloading the desktop spec, and adding more stuff
> > that shouldn't be there in the first place.
> 
> First you complain about missing stuff and then about stuff that
> should not be there? This does not sound logical to me.

That's too simple. It's also about where to put the new stuff. Just
because something is missing doesn't mean there are no good and bad
solutions.

> > >  Just drop a
> > > desktop file in /usr/share/Thunar/sendto and you are ready to go.
> > > I don't know a file manager that offers similar functionality
> > 
> > You mean like Windows 95's shortcuts so you can right-click on a
> > file and send to a floppy or the mail program?
> 
> Yes, quiet similar. Just because this was already invented in Windows
> 95 it does not necessarily mean it's bad. Do you think that a
> taskbar, a main menu or icons on the desktop are bad because Windows
> already had them?

I'm not sure Bastien even meant that they were bad. Just ... limited
in some use cases.

> > and
> > - discovery of targets (either Bluetooth OBEX PUSH devices, UPNP
> > shares, mail or IM contacts)
> 
> I already added that in Fedora. Take a
> look /usr/share/Thunar/sendto/thunar-sendto-bluetooth, which calls
> bluetooth-sendto. bluetooth-sendto will automatically search for
> devices and show them in the device selection dialog. But I don't
> need to tell you since it's your program.

Well, in that case the user has to select the device to which he wants
to send in a separate dialog that pops up after clicking the
bluetooth send-to item, right? Now you could argue whether it isn't
better to just one send-to item per bluetooth device so that you don't
have to go through that device selection dialog.

It's just like with the volumes: you just don't want a single "Volume"
item in the send-to menu which then pops up a dialog for selecting the
destination volume. So, for these cases desktop entries are not really
appropriate.

I agree that the sendto stuff used by Thunar is pretty simple and easily
extendable and thus, could be useful cross-desktop. That doesn't mean
people are not allowed to mix them with other send-to items (e.g.
bluetooth or volumes) anymore.

  - Jannis
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/attachments/20090609/310814be/attachment.pgp