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