[Debichem-devel] FYI: Menu transition and .desktop files

[Daniel Leidert]

Hi all,

(1) Debian menu system

This is just a reminder/information for those, that maybe missed it: The
categories (sections) for the Debian menu have been changed. So for all
menu files containg

section="Apps/Science"

the new entry must be

section="Applications/Science/Chemistry"
section="Applications/Education"

(or similar, if another category fits better). Note, that
"Applications/Science" is not a valid category. Lintian checks have been
adjusted to catch issues here.

Further I found some interesting thing we could use: The hints field
(see file:///usr/share/doc/menu/html/ch3.html#s3.8 or
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu.html/ch3.html#s3.8).
Maybe we should make use of this field for apps that could be grouped,
like:

- molecular viewers (rasmol, viewmol, pymol, ...)
- structure editors (xdrawchem, gchempaint, bkchem, chemtool, ...)

Maybe some other suggestions or comments?

(2) freedesktop.org .desktop files

Further I was informed, that some widely used entries in .desktop files
have become deprecated (like e.g. the Encoding field, which we use in a
lot of .desktop files). Please check your .desktop files (at least with
lintian). The validate-desktop-file utility unfortunately is currently
not compliant to the latest freedesktop.org spec, so it can output false
comments/warnings/errors.


I will wait for some comments (which are highly appreciated) and then
adjust our TODO file.

Regards, Daniel