Re: app wrappers and gworkspace

[Jonathan Shipley]

"Raffael Herzog" <herzog-lists@raffael.ch> writes:


> I've just included some very rudimentary support for loading .desktop
> files, but it's far from complete and I didn't manage yet to tell
> GNUstep to save it as .app even though it's been loaded from a
> .desktop file (the Cocoa docs state that setting NSRole=Viewer for
> .desktop files should do the job, but gnustep-gui doesn't seem to
> honour this).
>
> By StepTalk-enabling GSWrapper this could be made scriptable so that
> you  just need to run a script to get a bunch of wrappers. Or, maybe,
> I'll  simply include it in GSWrapper.
>

This is a very good start, which will certainly help the current
situation. And talk about fast.

I have some user-related questions, though.

1) Can the 'virtual' gnustep apps created be kept in sync with the
   distro's package system (/usr/share/applications/*.dektop) so that if
   the user adds or removes a package the wrappers will automatically
   adjust to the new situation?  Could this step of GNUstep-ising
   existing applications be done virtually when GNUstep firsts loads?  I
   really don't see the need for 'wrappers' for most of the system - but
   useful for user customisations in ~/GNUstep perhaps (see my last
   point).  Could you explain why app-wrappers are actually needed?

2) Can wrappers for apps that don't exist be ignored so that users are
   not presented with unachievable options: e.g. opening files with
   non-existant apps, as currently happens?  Perhaps this issue goes
   away if app-wrappers aren't pre-configured.  The interface must
   provide only reasonable choices if you want users to come on board.

3) Is there a way with the app-wrappers system for users to make their
   own customisations in their home directory?  I can think of uses for
   this, but the one time I tried to do this it didn't work.

Perhaps I am just showing my ignorance of GNUstep here, so I hope you
can all bear with me.
-- 
Jonathan