Calum: > That's why I've been asking (internally) if we could devise a way to > ensure that all apps that aren't listed in the Nevada UI spec have the > "NoDisplay=True" line added to their .desktop file-- preferably > automatically at build or install time, since that line would need to be > absent when downloaded and installed from an OpenSolaris repository.
Refering to the Desktop specification: http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s05.html If you set "Hidden=true" then the desktop file acts as if it is not installed at all. We could easily add Nevada specific branding patches to add this field for Nevada only. It might be possible to make this automatic, perhaps something like a postinstall script that adds the line to the desktop file only when installing to Nevada. However, adding some branding patches is so trivial I don't think it would be a big deal to just add patches to deal with this. Having said all this, I think we should first update the Nevada desktop spec and decide what we really want to remove, rather than just making it conform to the old spec. It doesn't make sense to remove everything new, and then add things back after we actually think about it. > That way, if you wanted to add such an app to your Nevada Applications > menu, it would just be a checkbox away in the menu editor. (Or you > could just run it from the command line anyway.) Or you could just remove the Hidden=true field in the desktop file. > Most other people I've mentioned it to seem to think it would be great > to have 500* different applications on their Nevada menu by default, > though, so maybe I'm fighting a losing battle... For what it's worth, I agree with you. I suspect that I would be more liberal than you about what should be included. I don't quite feel so strongly that we should never, ever have multiple programs to do the same thing. For example, I think GAIM and Xchat would compliment each other rather than conflict. But, I don't think we need 4 IRC clients in the menus either. But I think this is really a usability issue, and you are the expert. I appreciate that you are open to input from us engineers, but I think you should be the last word in how things look. At any rate, I think winging about adding a dozen or so branding patches to add "Hidden=true" is just a waste of time. If that's what the usability guys say we should do, lets just get it done. -- Brian
