Desktop Application Launchers are not POSIX compatible

[Michael Titke]

I like to keep some application starters in a folder ~/Applications because I need them once or twice a year but I am glad when I do not need to see them at all. One example is OpenOffice.org but that is a custom install - let's have a look at Inkscape.

First of all there doesn't seem to be anyway to create a Launcher for a running application. Dragging it's icon to a folder didn't work. After having found the desktop file in /usr/ share/applications/ I copied it to my Applications folder. Nautilus then told me something about an untrusted launcher.

To use an application launcher with the extension ".desktop" I have to set the POSIX executable bit on it but it is not a valid executable.

Example: I try to run it from the command line because it is executable because of the misuse of the flags and I will see the following.

mt@nPong:~$ Applications/inkscape.desktop
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 1: [Desktop: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 4: Graphics: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 5: X-GNOME-FullName=Inkscape: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 6: and: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 8: VectorGraphics: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 8: GTK: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 9: image/svg+xml-compressed: No such file or directory
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 9: application/vnd.corel-draw: No such file or directory
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 9: image/x-eps: No such file or directory
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 9: application/illustrator: No such file or directory
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 10: fg: no job control
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 15: X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=Drawing: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 16: X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=inkscape: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 18: [Drawing: command not found
Applications/inkscape.desktop: line 19: Drawing: command not found

That's freedesktop on POSIX: incompatible. Both are a bit of bloated system structure and I am not completely against freedesktop.org and its so called standards but in this case things have to be changed, please.

My favourite of statically linked or all in one application bundles might be a burden for Debian's infrastructure but I like Apache's OpenOffice.org sitting silently in /opt/openoffice4

To make dot-desktop launcher files POSIX compatible one might want to introduce a new shell and make each dot-desktop file start with

#!/usr/bin/desktop-shell

Nautilus already opens faithfully file system locations when called from the command line and handles regular dot-desktop launcher files anyway. Thus my proposal should be easy to implement. It might be enough to introduce "nautilus -launch <app>" and create a preliminary standard for the desktop-shell command.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.14.2-0ubuntu9
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-15.15-generic 3.19.3
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-15-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.17.2-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Jun 16 15:43:09 2015
GsettingsChanges: b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'default-column-order' b"['name', 'size', 'type', 'date_modified', 'date_accessed', 'owner', 'group', 'permissions', 'mime_type', 'where']"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-06-08 (8 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)