Relative paths in .desktop files

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 15:30 +0200, David Faure wrote:
> On Thursday 23 June 2011, you wrote:
> > If you just want to give the script an icon, you can embed
> > the icon in the script, and write a thumbnailer for it.
> > IMHO, having "run_me.sh" in the folder is enough.
> > Having "run_me.sh", "run_me.desktop", and "run_me.png" in the folder
> > won't increase usability.
> > 
> > There are several ways to embed an icon in a script file. Just apend
> > it to the end of file, or encode it with base64 or some others. Then
> > having a thumbnailer decode such thing won't be too difficult. By
> > adding a comment line containing specific strings in the script,
> > during mime-type sniffing, it's easy to recognize this kind of file
> > with mime-type magic rules.
> 
> You know, not everyone is a developer. I am, but most people just want the 
> *simplest* way to create an "icon" shortcut which launches something.
> 
> Think of the usability for the creator of the shortcut too, not only the 
> usability for the end user (who just clicks on something anyway).
> 
> Writing a thumbnailer, or encoding an icon with base64, is nowhere as simple 
> as writing out with a text editor (or a standard properties dialog)
> Exec=./foo.sh
> Icon=some-standard-icon
> 
> KISS :-)
> 
> If some desktops want to also offer something at a higher-level that's fine, but 
> not everything should need a GUI, in the Unix world. There's a strong use case 
> for being able to do things from a command-line, in text mode, as well.

I'm fine with relative paths. As long as you can't reference files in
parent directories, only ever children nodes, then it's fine by me.