I got more and interesting feedback about how GNOME applications should handle devices:
- Luke Hutchison suggested adding a system to .desktop files for an app that allows for the app to be activated when a specific D-BUS signal was raised. e.g. in gnome-cd.desktop :
Capability[0]=/org/freedesktop/hw-events/insert-cdda-cd
Capability_Exec[0]=gnome-cd --unique --play --device %d - Jerry Haltom pointed to two more threads about using MIME types:
- David Zeuthen blogged about extending .desktop files with sections things like [System Action MediaAudioDiscInserted]
- Luca Ferretti pointed me to
- http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-November/msg00187.html
- http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164991
and also sent me his unfinished answer to Thomas mail, proposing also a way to extend .desktop file to handle events, like X-GNOME-HANDLE-BLANKCD=true
- hadess also agrees on extending .desktop file for handling events.
So it seems that there is some agrement on extending .desktop files, and that it should be proposed/done at fd.org level.