Specifying sensible device types to use an application on in the desktop file

[Bastien Nocera]

On Fri, 2020-10-09 at 17:55 +0200, Guido Günther wrote:
> Hi,
> On Fri, Oct 09, 2020 at 05:08:10PM +0200, piegames wrote:
> > So the main motivation for this is to *hide elements* from the
> > menu? As
> > in, if I unplug the keyboard I cannot find some apps in the
> > launcher
> > any more? That sounds arbitrary and frustrating IMO. But I don't
> > really
> > understand the point of this feature. What will it bring to the
> > users?
> 
> Not necessarily hiding permanently but rather sorting or showing with
> proper priority (e.g. on search).
> 
> E.g There's no point in having kicad, gimp, libreoffice, inkscape,
> freecad, gnumeric, ... in a prominent place on a phone when no large
> screen is attached. It's busywork for the user to have them sort that
> out
> by arranging apps manually when the shell can sort applications
> properly
> into a 'fits the current device mode' and 'all apps' tabs.

I don't see how this would be implemented. Right now, it's unclear what
makes a phone, which peripherals need to be plugged in and enabled to
make it not a phone anymore. Is a tablet with a keyboard a laptop? Is a
large phone with a keyboard a laptop? Is a small tablet with a mouse a
laptop?

I think that if the user installs KiCad, LibreOffice, or VSCode on a
phone, they'll likely put it somewhere in the launchers where it
doesn't get in the way of their normal usage.

There's already a "control" section in appstream:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html#tag-requires-recommends-control

Maybe that's the data you're looking for?