Displaying *.desktop files in Caja

Back in Gnome2 I saw how Nautilus handled *.desktop files. It would display the internal name field instead of the real filename (like “Blueman Applet” instead of “blueman.desktop”). No problem, I grumbled and switched to terminal. Caja continued this last I knew.

I just today noticed Caja is displaying real filenames in ~/.config/autostart/. I verified this is even true in 16.04 MATE 12. Whoa, when did that happen?

But now I find it’s gotten even more complicated. If you open (execute apparently) one of these in Caja it warns about not being marked as “trusted” which I see simply means the x permission set. BUT - once it’s set, it goes back to the old format of displaying the internal filename! Except, /usr/share/applications/ has nothing set “trusted”.

Geeze… can anyone point to WTH is going on? The search term “desktop” is really a bad one. :confounded:

I think the whole idea of having desktop-files is absurd.

That aside, i don’t know what changed when. Seeing as how i don’t worry about desktop files. All the stuff i use is set up as icons in panels, or the infrequently used stuff like calculator is available in the mate app-menu.

[Take the idea of having icons in panels, that you can actually modify to point at real commands with real parameters, and add another “panel” that represents all the screen real-estate not already covered by the top/bottom/left/right panels, and the whole issue of having or editing desktop-files becomes moot.]

Anyway you still want to edit the things. For that, the only help i can offer is my nautilusExtension utillity, which i’ve posted about before. If you can get caja or nautilus to select the file, it’ll let you edit it readonly or readwrite and if necessary it’ll relaunch itself as root so you can do the edit you want to do. Unfortunately, even though it’s one self-contained file, it relies on a working PHP installation (not necessarily for Apache, just for commands), so that’s something i can’t help with. PHP installation is worse than Apache because it presumes Apache and then adds about a thousand more semi-documented configuration variables that do who-knows-what. It probably requires other things i’ve forgotten about (like zenity for dialogs, nedit for editing), and the menu layout is cryptic and undocumented, since PHP being such a mortal PITA there was never any expectation others would use it.

But, it’s non-hostile (even though maybe stupid) and it’ll do many nice things that the caja lames didn’t think to include… like putting the name of the goddamn file in the clipboard so you can trot over to the paleolithic command terminal and ctl/alt/v it into a command.

IOW i can’t do a thing to help, but i do feel your pain. fwiw.

[edit: sorry to have seemed so… rancid maybe is the word, but when i got into computing long ago i really had high hopes for it, and other than apologizing for my tone, i’m not changing a thing.]

We actually have similar views on a lot of things but I keep it more hidden in the background. Don’t get me started on how distros arranged grub-pc all over the place for example. :rage: :slight_smile:

But the inevitable system complexity that leads to isolated issues because the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing can’t go away. Ultimately, these are usually different developers focused on different things. My comparison is the 1900 automobile evolving so your didn’t need to be a mechanic to use one. No different, really. I often feel like the one shouting “Get a horse!”

When Caja fails to display the actual name of a *.desktop file I do see red. I also know *.desktop files are a standard across distros for defining how apps run and appear in menus regardless the DE. I can live with that. It has a need. Makes me wonder if this spec is the reason they behave as silly as this in Nautilus/Caja.

And I doubt we’re much different in time frames. My first exposure to computing was early 1970s when a company that owned more than 1 that filled a room was rare. By 1980 I was programming bowling league software printing weekly stats on ditto sheets. Next year I will be McCartney’s “Will you still need me…”.

Well, okay, i think it can. I think a whole lot of this dismal mess can go away.

If i had the superpowers, i’d make some things happen, but i don’t, so i’ll take the slow boat. If i can ever get off my ass.

For the first day in recent memory, i can do literally anything i want to do. And i’ve spent all day so far, wondering what the hell that is.

I’d work on hoss, if i can get deep enough into code everything else goes away; but my next thang on that project is to see if netbeans is worth a damn because codeblocks leaves something to be desired. When i need to look at the structure a pointer is pointing to, i don’t need to set a watch for the variable and then expand the watched variable to find out that i have to get on the web to find out how to use the thing and totally forget what i wanted to see the thing for in the beginning.

We should probably go offline for further exploration of things, if we don’t want to upset the undisillusioned.

I keep a Pluma launcher on my panel. When I want to edit a .desktop file I just drag and drop on that.

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Regarding .desktop files, to make one for the actual desktop;
mate-desktop-item-edit --create-new ~/Desktop

Then running it from terminal, do sh -c 'mate-desktop-item-edit --create-new ~/Desktop' to make a launcher which makes launchers.

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I found the Desktop Entry Specification. I still wonder why actual filenames are conditionally displayed in Caja. My favorite lean-n-mean PCManFM always displays internal name. No mention of this in the spec.