On Mon, 25 Jan 2021 at 12:33, Jonathan Billings <billings@negate.org> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 10:27:07AM -0400, George N. White III wrote:
> It is probably time to have a system of unique identifiers.  Package
> managers would need to provide a way to search for these ID's.

That is what the XDG Desktop entry spec[1] is for.  It helps the
desktop environment know what applications are available and what they
are for.

XDG Desktop entry spec says:

The desktop entry specification describes desktop entries: files d
escribing information about an application such as the name, icon,
and description. These files are used for application launchers and
for creating menus of applications that can be launched.

That doesn't address the problem of totally different programs sharing similar
names.

With Evoluion, the .desktop file provides has a lot of hints that it
is a mail reader.  For example, these are all set: 

"mail reader" is not very helpful as it misses the most of the modern email "client"
functions: composing, sending, calendar, addresses, spam management, etc. 

--
George N. White III