Toby, > Is there a more long-term reason for why the Pet-id needs to be > explicitly supplied by the user that isn't evident in the current > code?
There is a good reason why the Pet-id needs to be explicitly supplied by the user. Pet names are a computer security mechanism that is documented at [1]. Essentially, asking the user to supply the name ensures that the user knows that the icon they are clicking is for the programme they just gave the pet name to. If I have just installed a programme and called it "browse-the-web" then I know that the "browse-the-web" button that gets created in my applications menu is the correct command. If I have named all of the commands in my application menu myself then I know that some nasty programme has not installed itself as "browse_the_web" to try and confuse me. To be properly secure pet names plash needs to ensure that they are placed into a namespace that contains only other pet names. This is probably why plash didn't put the .desktop file on my desktop last time I tried. If it did then I might have made a mistake because, for instance, my browser uses my desktop as the default download location and uses the server-suggested file name. An enemy of mine could use these defaults to create a file called "browse-the-web.desktop" which I might accidentally click. Regards, James [1] http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNames.html
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