To run applications from GNOME, users click on icons on their desktops or they select the applications which they want to run from a menu. Therefore, the first step in integrating an existing program with GNOME is to register it with the set of applications that users can run.
On a Mac: Double-click the GNOME program icon on your desktop to start GNOME. Seeing an 'unidentified developer' message? Note about Help files for Windows Users Back to text To use the GNOME help topics in Windows Vista, 7, and 8, you will need to download and install the help application, WinHlp32.exe, from the Microsoft Download Center. Installing Linux on a Mac. Yes, there is an option to run Linux temporarily on a Mac through the virtual box but if you’re looking for a permanent solution, you might want to completely replace the present operating system with a Linux distro. To install Linux on a Mac, you’ll need a formatted USB drive with storage up to 8GB. Instructions for installing a Tomboy Mac release. Install Mono for Mac OS X. Download the Tomboy. Open the disk image, and drag Tomboy.app to your Applications folder (due to a bug in our disk image you may have trouble selecting Tomboy.app.if so, try selecting it by dragging a square around it). Open Tomboy.app and enjoy! GNOME on Wayland has one touchpad gesture by default: a four-finger swipe to switch workspaces, up and down or left and right. Personally, I have three fingers left and right as “Back” and “Forward” in a web browser, “Up” as “Toggle Overview,” and “Down” as “Show App Drawer”. How to install GNOME Software Center on Chrome OS. Linux app support is currently in testing on Chrome OS and as such, is only available to those on the beta update channel. If you’ve made the move and installed Linux, you should have the Linux Terminal app installed on your Chrome OS. Launch the Terminal app from your app launcher.
Unlike in Windows or MacOS, in GNOME the users menus are automatically constructed from the list of registered applications. Each published application specifies a set of categories to which it belongs, and the systems menu configuration sorts and arranges them. This mechanism follows the freedesktop.org desktop entry and menu standards.
Though common in other desktops, creating your own application-specific submenu is not recommended. Instead, provide one menu item for each application you ship. Extra items such as help files, READMEs or links to your web site should be embedded into the application itself.
In GNOME and other freedesktop.org-compliant desktops, an application gets registered into the desktop's menus through a desktop entry, which is a text file with .desktop extension. This desktop file contains a listing of the configurations for your application. The desktop takes the information in this file and uses it to:
To add a menu entry for your application, create a desktop file. It should have a unique filename, and there are no length limits so avoid abbreviations and feel free to include brand names. However, don't put spaces or international characters in the file name. For instance, 'foocorp-painter-pro.desktop' would be a good filename to choose but 'fcpp.desktop' would be a bad name, as would 'FooCorp Painter Pro.desktop'. The file should be UTF-8 encoded, and should resemble the following template:
These desktop files contain metadata about your application, and play a central role in integrating the program with the GNOME and other standards compliant desktops. The template presented here is the most basic possible. The file can be linguistically translated so your applications name can appear in the user's native language.
Place this file in the /usr/share/applications directory so that it is accessible by everyone, or in ~/.local/share/applications if you only wish to make it accessible to a single user. Which is used should depend on whether your application is installed systemwide or into a user's home directory. GNOME monitors these directories for changes, so simply copying the file to the right location is enough to register it with the desktop. 1
Each working desktop file needs to follow the same format. A minimal example of a desktop file is shown in Example 1-1. The file is split into sections, each starting with the section descriptor in square brackets. In this example, only one section is shown as that is the essential section to integrating your application to the desktop. Within each section, the part of each line before the equal sign is the key while the second half is the value. An explanation of each line is shown in Table 1-1.
The informant has bundled your task planning, notes, and calendar in a single app. Minimalist calendar app mac. The Mac app looks pretty much the same as its web version. The app lets you sign up using your Google, Facebook account, or you can also create a simple account using your email. If you used your Google account to sign up, it will automatically sync all your calendar events. The app is minimal and looks nice. You get a two column layout with.
Other than the first line identifying the desktop file, the order of the lines is not important. In Example 1-1, the line Type=Application could be the second row, the fifth row, or the last row and the result would be the same.
However, the keys are case sensitive. Type=Application is not the same as type=Application or TYPE=Application.
Line | Description |
---|---|
[Desktop Entry] | The first line of every desktop file and the section header to identify the block of key value pairs associated with the desktop. Necessary for the desktop to recognize the file correctly. |
Type=Application | Tells the desktop that this desktop file pertains to an application. Other valid values for this key are Link and Directory. |
Encoding=UTF-8 | Describes the encoding of the entries in this desktop file. |
Name=Sample Application Name | Names of your application for the main menu and any launchers. |
Comment=A sample application | Describes the application. Used as a tooltip. |
Exec=application | The command that starts this application from a shell. It can have arguments. |
Icon=application.png | The icon name associated with this application. |
Terminal=false | Describes whether application should run in a terminal. |
If your application can take command line arguments, you can signify that by using the fields as shown in Table 1-2.
Add.. | Accepts.. |
---|---|
%f | a single filename. |
%F | multiple filenames. |
%u | a single URL. |
%U | multiple URLs. |
%d | a single directory. Used in conjunction with %f to locate a file. |
%D | multiple directories. Used in conjunction with %F to locate files. |
%n | a single filename without a path. |
%N | multiple filenames without paths. |
%k | a URI or local filename of the location of the desktop file. |
%v | the name of the Device entry. |
To create localized names and comments, additional lines for each locale need to be added. For example, to add a Swedish version of the comment, add the following line:
Comment[sv]=Exempelprogramnamn
There is no limit to the number of translations in the file.
Since maintaining a long list of translations in a file is cumbersome, a better way to create these translations is to use the intltool package. See the man pages for intltool-extract and intltool-merge for more information.
Desktop Entry Specification — Specifications for creating a desktop file.
1Note that the ~/.local/share/applications location is not monitored by versions of GNOME prior to version 2.10 or on Fedora Core Linux, prior to version 2.8. These versions of GNOME follow the now-deprecated vfolder standard, and so desktop files must be installed to ~/.gnome2/vfolders/applications. This location is not supported by GNOME 2.8 on Fedora Core nor on upstream GNOME 2.10 so for maximum compatibility with deployed desktops, put the file in both locations.
Note that the KDE Desktop requires one to run kbuildsycoca to force a refresh of the menus.
Desktop files: putting your application in the desktop menus | Installing icons |