Namespace for generic desktop libraries

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Hey all,

I'm kind of stuck in a library naming problem right now. I'm working on
an implementation of the XDG menu specification. For a while this
project had the name "libxfce4menu" but with a recent API redesign and
reimplementation came interest from others to use it in e.g. Alacarte.
Of course I could've sticked to "libxfce4menu" ... but with the rewrite
I felt that it was time to give it a more generic name to encourage
other people to use it outside of Xfce.

The plan was to rename it to "gdesktopmenu" (with classes like
GDesktopMenu or GDesktopMenuParser). The "g"/"G" prefix should've
expressed that it is written for GLib-based applications mainly.

However, with C++, C#, Vala and other languages using namespaces, this
library would either end up in the "GLib" namespace or in "GDesktop".
Both seem inappropriate. I then thought about "dmenu" (for "d(esktop)
menu", sorta like "D-Bus" or "dconf"). But then I wouldn't know in what
namespace it ends up in. So ... I'm kind of lost. 

The library will be used by Xfce, presumably by Alacarte. I think the
API design (once we have the MenuEditor, MenuWriter and more
fine-grained monitoring signals) is very powerful [1]. It keeps the
<Menu> tree and the menu items (aka desktop entries) more or less
separated and allows for easy modifications of both. It might be
interesting for GNOME as well. I've heard rumors about gnome-menus
being a little unpleasant to work with. The current status can be found
on [2].

What prefix would you suggest? I suppose that "xdg" (with GObject
classes like XdgMenu and Vala/C#/C++ classes like XDG.Menu or Xdg.Menu)
only makes sense if it's widely accepted/used. Or should I just use
it, hoping the library will gain popularity soon? How do you handle this
in your libraries (those that are not tied to any particular desktop
environment)? How about a new namespace for widely used desktop
libraries that are not necessarily XDG reference implementations?

A lot of questions, I know. I'd be happy to get some feedback on this.
Worst case scenario is that I have to come up with a entirely fresh
name for it.

  - Jannis

[1] http://tinyurl.com/dxjxs3 (blog post about the new API)
[2] http://git.xfce.org/jannis/libxfce4menu/tree/?branch=parser-rewrite
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