Hello, Earlier I noticed that *.dt files contain much the same information as *.desktop files, so I thought I'd see about automatically converting from *.desktop to *.dt. Here's a first try, in the form of a shell script. It reads one or more desktop files, listed on the command line, to generate as many .dt files and the corresponding icons. Each .dt file contains only the action that would start the command. This does NOT handle quite a few things: -multiple locales ( for example, Comment[de]= could make an entry in the right locale). -putting anything in the right place -line-wrapped entries -adding entries to the app manager -file types and associations -most sanity checks That said, this works for me: cd emptydir desktop2dt /usr/share/applications/nedit.desktop \ /usr/share/applications/xephem.desktop mv *.dt ~/.dt/types/ mv *.pm ~/.dt/icons/ touch ~/.dt/appmanager/Desktop_Apps/nedit touch ~/.dt/appmanager/Desktop_Apps/xephem chmod +x ~/.dt/appmanager/Desktop_Apps/nedit chmod +x ~/.dt/appmanager/Desktop_Apps/xephem and then go to Desktop_Tools > Reload Applications I'd like to hear any comments you have. Thanks, Isaac Dunham =-= Hello, I've been working on desktop2dt some more, and have a version that works much better. It can handle icons in subdirectories, installing files (to $DESTDIR/etc/dt or ~/.dt), and terminal applications. There are still some missing features: -line-wrapped entries -adding entries to the app manager -file types and associations Unless we use libmagic, this will be a real pain. -multiple locales ( for example, Comment[de]= could make an entry in the right locale). Currently, it's hard-coded to output action databases in the C locale. Usage is similar to the last version, except -i installs everything: desktop2dt -i /usr/share/applications/nedit.desktop \ /usr/share/applications/xephem.desktop touch ~/.dt/appmanager/Desktop_Apps/nedit touch ~/.dt/appmanager/Desktop_Apps/xephem chmod +x ~/.dt/appmanager/Desktop_Apps/nedit chmod +x ~/.dt/appmanager/Desktop_Apps/xephem and then go to Desktop_Tools > Reload Applications If you can test it, that will be a great help. I've tried to stick to POSIX, but I only tested on Squeeze. Thanks, Isaac Dunham =-= Hello, Here's the third revision of the script. What's new: * Converts %u, %U, %f, and %F to "%(File)Arg_1%" (with quotes). * -a option to install in the app manager (Thanks to Antonis Tsolomis for suggesting these improvements.) * Slightly improved icon location search (based on PREFIX). Still needs to handle wrapped lines, but that's the main issue with processing .desktop files for applications that remains. HTH, Isaac Dunham =-= Here's a fourth revison of desktop2dt. Changes: * export and test were changed for compatability with old shells like Solaris has * ~ was changed to $HOME because it didn't always get expanded. Not yet changed: I'm inclined to prevent creation of appmanager folders more than 3 deep. Still no multi-locale stuff. If someone has a way to figure out which locales to grab (two-letter) and where they go (CDE locale), I'm open to including it. Still doesn't handle line wrap. I may be able to deal with this. The more platforms it's tested on, the better; I'd like to hear from someone using one of the BSDs. So far, it's been tested on Debian and Solaris, with at least the following shells on Debian: bash, dash, busybox ash, pdksh, mksh, ksh93 This would suggest that it should work on all the BSDs as well. Besides POSIX sh, find, sed, and grep, it needs imagemagick (or graphicksmagick + imagemagick-compat). Thanks, Isaac Dunham