Fedora 15, new and exciting plans

[Genes MailLists]

On 11/14/2010 12:15 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:

> 
> Anything installing an application on the system (whether it's part of
> Fedora or not) really should be installing a desktop file. If there's no
> desktop file, there's no way for the user to launch the application.
> 
> In GNOME 3, no desktop file also means that it won't behave properly as
> an application.... it won't get the right name and icon in the top
> panel, etc.
> 
> Once there is a desktop file, then, yes you would add it to favorites.
> Favorite are very close in function to a launcher on the panel - you can
> get to them with a single mouse-click using the "hot corner" activation
> of the Activities Overview.
> 
> (If Mathematica has a desktop file and it's just not being picked up by
> GNOME 3, then creating a symlink into ~/.local/share/applications will
> work.)
> 
> Is there going to be a GUI to create a desktop file for a something that
> doesn't have a desktop file? (Something like the "Add custom launcher"
> dialog for gnome-panel currently.) It's not in our plans currently, and
> I'm not really sure where it would neatly fit into the user interface.
> 
> One possibility is the one you mentioned - if someone starts an
> application that we don't recognize and tries to make it a favorite, we
> prompt them for the missing information and create a desktop file in
> ~/.local/share/applications. But really, it's something that ISVs have
> to get right and anything else is a workaround. 	
> 


  I have a lot of non-fedora applications I added via the 'custom
launcher' tool - it would be really nice to be able to do this - whether
its mathematica or sometimes its upstream versions of apps (I use test
versions of thunderbird for example) as well as a bunch of other apps.

  Certainly be nice if gnome 3 made it as easy as it is in gnome 2 ...

 thanks for your thoughts.

gene