Removing OnlyShowIn / NotShowIn from desktop actions

[Ted Gould]

On Tue, 2013-07-02 at 17:54 -0400, Jasper St. Pierre wrote:
> Now that we're trying to implement desktop actions in GNOME, we're
> running into the issue that a lot of existing desktop actions are
> using OnlyShowIn / NotShowIn incorrectly. For a quick example,
> Transmission's actions are being marked as only showing in Unity:
> 
> https://trac.transmissionbt.com/attachment/ticket/4804/0104_add_keywords.patch
> 
> 
> I'm curious what the original rationale for adding OnlyShowIn /
> NotShowIn to desktop actions. Personally, I think applications
> switching behavior based on what desktop environment they're in is
> wrong. I'm curious if we can remove these fields for desktop actions
> from the desktop entry specification, since I cannot think of a valid
> use case for environment-specific actions.


The use case was two fold.  First there was concern that some desktops
might not want to implement the actions or might implement them
differently.  It's also possible that desktops could put different sets
of actions in different places.  For instance, the Unity Launcher vs.
the Messaging Menu.  This way some items could be in one, the other, or
both depending on how the values are set.

It seems to me like they are using the values correctly, but have been
set more specific than you'd prefer.  I'd imagine that most upstreams
would be willing to accept patches to adjust the values if GNOME Shell
is getting support for them.

Ted

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