RFC: new OnlyShowIn/NotShowIn values: MATE and RAZOR

[Emmanuele Bassi]

hi;

On 15 January 2012 12:10, PCMan <pcman.tw at gmail.com> wrote:
> Slightly off topic, is there any consensus on how to detect current desktop
> environment?
> Previously a proposed environment variable XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP was mentioned
> on the ML, but there was no conclusion.
> Can we start a discussion on this issue again?
> It's very important for desktop-independent applications, such as web
> browsers.

applications should be detecting capabilities, not doing string
comparisons on desktop environment names.

a desktop environment UX can change without its name changing; or new
desktop environments, with similar UX can appear.

checking the name of the desktop environment is going to be hopelessly
out of date, or actively wrong.

plus, are you seriously going to add a bunch of
whitelisting/blacklisting of behaviours inside application code, and
basing it on strings? because that *will* break. it's like
whitelisting or blacklisting a GL driver based on the output of the
glxinfo Renderer string: let's not repeat the mistakes of the past
(*cough* Flash *cough*).

> If you're not able to detect current DE, how can you apply
> OnlyShowIn/NotShowIn correctly?

showing entries is the desktop environment role, not the application's
role - and a desktop environment should know its own name.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/