media handling ("autoplay") followup

Joe [1]: I already proposed a “desktop-entry-hotplug-spec” [2] some time ago. I sent it two times and didn’t receive any feedback, so I wasn’t sure whether it is considered important.

The other feature you demanded (actions for files) is IIRC already implemented by KDE. I’m not sure how we should tackle this and I am not so happy with the KDE system.

Example:


[Desktop Action reSize640x480]
Name=Scale to 640x480
Icon=images
Exec=mogrify -resize 640x480! %U
Terminal=false
Type=Application


While it allows for maximum flexibility we’ll end up with a can of worms when internationalizing this since it will be distributed with each application, especially with routine actions like printing. Also, it doesn’t consider how many items are selected – it is common to use ngettext() for internationalizing strings referring to countable objects.

It would really be great if we at least had some actions – maybe similar to those in [2] – for printing and enqueueing. Applications would simply provide a special Exec parameter, and we could immediately see that an application provides this capability.

Oh, and while we’re at it I also have an old “keyword-spec” draft that might be of general interest. I’ll sent it to you by email to get some feedback.

[1] http://joeshaw.org/2007/01/14/452

[2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2006-October/msg00002.html