Proposal for an intent-apps spec

[Bastien Nocera]

On Mon, 2021-05-03 at 12:13 +0200, David Faure wrote:
> On lundi 3 mai 2021 12:04:30 CEST Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > On Mon, 2021-05-03 at 11:44 +0200, David Faure wrote:
> > > Hello everyone,
> > > 
> > > I just created
> > > https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/merge_requests/45
> > > with the proposal for an intent-apps spec, modeled after the mime-
> > > apps spec
> > > (but without the concept of adding/removing associations).
> > > 
> > > For context:
> > > 
> > > * The desktop entry spec mentions Implement=<intent name> already
> > > for
> > > some
> > > time, but AFAIK this isn't used anywhere yet?
> > > 
> > > * What's missing is a way to let the user (or the sysadmin or the
> > > distro)
> > > decide which alternative to prefer (possibly depending on the
> > > desktop
> > > environment). mimeapps does this nicely for mimetypes, so
> > > intentapps
> > > just
> > > reuses that solution, but outside the world of mimetypes
> > > 
> > > * This came up in
> > > https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/issues/54
> > > where we're discussing "Have a standard way for users to specify
> > > which
> > > terminal should open .desktop applications with Terminal=true".
> > > The solution involves implementing a DBus interface (dubbed
> > > org.freedesktop.Terminal1). This is similar to the existing
> > > org.freedesktop.FileManager1 DBus interface. All applications
> > > implementing
> > > org.freedesktop.Terminal1 will specify
> > > Implements=org.freedesktop.Terminal1 in their desktop file, and
> > > intent-
> > > apps.lst files can then be used to pick the preferred one.
> > 
> > This still doesn't fix the problem of knowing _how_ to launch
> > applications in those terminals when the options are different, and
> > expect different values, which was the problem in the first place.
> 
> This is handled by the DBus interface.
> 
> It's not
> * lookup desktop file from intent
> * execute the Exec line of that desktop file, which will be like xterm
> -e..
> 
> It's
> * lookup desktop file from intent
> * start that process
> * make a DBus call to it

How do you plan on implementing that in, say, xterm, or rxvt?

Note that specs are usually only accepted when implementations already
exist for a vendor-ed version of it, or a WIP version of it.

> > Please also make a formatted version of the spec available, it's
> > easier
> > to read than docbook diffs ;)
> 
> I'm having trouble doing that. There's no discount-mkd2html
> executable on 
> binary, I found a mkd2html

This is the software:
https://github.com/Orc/discount

But this is only used for the index page, not for the specs themselves.

>  and added a symlink with that name, but I'm not 
> sure that's right. Now ./update.py (with Local=True and a line in
> specs.idx 
> pointing to HEAD)

You need to make it point to your branch. But you could also generate a
single page just for your document.

>  runs to the end but doesn't generate any HTML for the 
> spec...
>