Bug 73125 – Open Office does not create .desktop files in standard place

• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Andrew Conkling 2004-12-02 05:11:12 UTC]

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60331
Apparently, Ximian's Open Office does, but the Open Office ebuild does not create .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/.  Rather (for me), they are in /opt/OpenOffice.org/share/gnome/net/.  If I link them to /usr/share/applications, they show up in my system menu, but not otherwise.

FWIW, I'm using Xfce, which uses /usr/share/applications as the FD.O system-wide standard.

Could this linking be added to the ebuild so that they'd be installed in a "normal" place and picked up by the menus?

[Comment 1 Paul de Vrieze (RETIRED) 2004-12-03 01:57:29 UTC]

When specifying the gnome useflag the gnome desktop files are installed into:
/usr/share/gnome/apps/OpenOffice.org

As far as I know these files are not suited for installation in /usr/share/applications. Neither are the kde specific files.

[Comment 2 Gregorio Guidi (RETIRED) 2004-12-03 02:42:01 UTC]

With respect to kde, all recent version should support desktop files in /usr/share/applications, all that is needed is an entry like
"Categories=Application;Office;" at the bottom of each .desktop file
so that they go into the "Office" submenu.

If you want to put them in an "OpenOffice" submenu, or in
"Office -> OpenOffice", just create a file
"/etc/xdg/menus/applications-merged/openoffice.menu".

For instance, to create the "Office -> OpenOffice" menu, that file should
look like this:

 <!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/1.0/menu.dtd">

<Menu>
<Menu>
        <Name>Office</Name>
        <Menu>
                <Name>OpenOffice</Name>
                <Include>
                        <And>
                                <Category>OpenOffice</Category>
                        </And>
                </Include>
        </Menu>
</Menu>
</Menu>

(and each .desktop file should then have "Categories=Application;OpenOffice;")

I don't know about gnome, but as this is a freedesktop standard, it should not
be too different.
It is also possible to specify an icon for the submenu, and so on...

[Comment 3 Andrew Conkling 2004-12-03 07:25:40 UTC]

"I don't know about gnome, but as this is a freedesktop standard, it should not
be too different."

This was my impression too.  Xfce builds its menu from /usr/share/applications, so the .desktop files therein are hardly Gnome-specific.  I don't have the Gnome USE flag set anywhere on my system and GTK programs put .desktop files therein all the time.  In fact, Opera does.

Linking the ones in /opt/... works, but it would be nice for Gentooers if this behaviour were available for the number of other DEs (that is, not Gnome or KDE) that would take advantage of the FD.O standard....

[Comment 4 Gregorio Guidi (RETIRED) 2004-12-03 09:01:05 UTC]

Found a long discussion here:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=30731

see for instance comment 7...

[Comment 5 Andreas Proschofsky (RETIRED) 2005-01-16 13:45:06 UTC]

I think we should go with upstream, which seems to resist to fix this in advance to 2.0 Otherwise we will basically have to provide our own desktop files or break the gnome and kde mimetypes, so closing this