Extending the Desktop Entry spec for static app actions

[Matthias Clasen]

On Thu, 2011-11-24 at 17:41 +0100, Giovanni Campagna wrote:

> Identifiers must be composed only of lowercase alphabetic characters
> from the ASCII set, plus underscore and minus. Some implementations may
> give special meanings to some identifiers (for example, replacing a
> default new window action with a shortcut idenfied by new-window),
> though this is not required.
> The group name is reversed, to ensure we always start with a known
> string. This is an assumption desktop-file-validate currently makes, and
> is good in general.

desktop-file-validate will not accept this as is anyway, since the group
name doesn't start with an X-. Which is the main beef I have with
Canonical pushing these desktop entry extensions without seeking
standardization. 

I don't think adding 'Shortcut Group' to the group name adds anything,
really, and I'd prefer to just use the identifier unchanged. Also,
DesktopShortcuts could be shortened to just 'Shortcuts' without any
loss.

> Any opinions or comments? If not, I'll prepare a patch for the
> specification.

I think the main thing missing here is motivation and expectations. The
spec needs to explain what implementations are supposed to do with these
shortcuts. E.g. is it ok to just ignore them ?

We also need a desktop-file-utils patch, eventually.