Anyone with any light to shed?

.desktop files are essentially used similar to Windows' registry - you create such a metadata file in a specific location, and it acts as a launcher, autostart setup, and file type assignment (so you can easily assign e.g. PNG files to open with Krita by default).

As the wiki says, you can put multiple MIME types (file type descriptor such as "text/plain" or "application/json" or "image/jpeg" and so on) onto one dotdesktop file, meaning you only need a single launcher to support all file types.

Krita explicitly creates quite a few dotdesktop files, each supporting only a single MIME type.

Downside: littered desktop.

Upside: you can easily pick and choose which file types to open with Krita directly.

Most desktop environments actually handle the [samename]. extension.desktop repetition so you'll only have one Krita launcher entry but it will still collate all MIME type support that is present. Want to exclude e.g. BMP files? Delete the .bmp.desktop file.

This part of the UX and development of linux is still very much taking baby steps unfortunately. Massive lack of interest and manpower to do these things cleanly and provide good documentation.

So thats fucking why?????????????????? omfg.

krita have so much in "open with" menu on gnome hily shit

XDG Desktop files are a mostly standardized way to integrate individual programs into the desktop. For example, a desktop file in /usr/share/applications or ~/.local/share/applications can add programs to the application launcher, both desktop launcher menus and separate apps like dmenu-run; or they can be used to start applications when the desktop session starts by placing them in ~/.config/autostart.

Desktop files can also set properties related to an application. In this particular case, the MimeType field tells the desktop session what MIME types should be associated with the application. For example, my desktop file for Blender associates the application/x-blender MIME type with it, which causes Blender to show up in the Open with... dialog.

The MimeType field is a semicolon-separated list. One desktop file can define multiple associated MIME types for the same application. Krita instead creates a separate file for each association.

This is nonsense. The documentation is readily available, and it takes arguably less time to provide the code to write a single, proper file than to create 50 desktop entries.

This is just ignorance on whoever wrote that part of Krita.

Hmm, what distro? I don't use Krita regularly, but never seen it have lots of desktop files.

I do be on KDE, though, so might also be some KDE-specific fix, I guess...

I just hate it, need to remove Krita, stopped using it after Gimp is Wayland native.

Gnome shows like a million of open with Krita entries.

😂👌

Because distros don't do it differently. Different DEs sometimes deviate from the established standards and practices. It's not a distro change, it's whatever weird little DE you use that decided to do something stupid.

That being said .desktop is a unified standard with unified documentation implemented in a fairly unified way across various DEs, with the only difference is some DEs support finding desktop files in some extra folder locations.

Every distro could maintain a complete list of popular DEs and a link to the documentation, or people could just look it up for the DEs they use and target. I agree there should, at this point in time, be some standard service to just call and handle desktop files that all DEs use that way application level developers can just call that same service and everything gets put everywhere it needs to be, but given the controversy of systemd, there's not going to be a universal solution for that since this is absolutely not a kernel-level service that needs to happen.

Get in the timeout box.

why are you posting here instead of sending a bug report to krita?

Damm, I learned a lot about Linux through this meme

I have not looked at Krita, but I can þink of one (still indefensible) reason to do þis: if þe launcher needs special flags per file type. For example, if Krita needed krita --svg file.svg and krita --png file.png. Þis would require multiple .desktop files. If þat were þe reason, it'd be better to fix þe arguments and build in file type detection or, worst case, create a bash launcher which does so. So it's still indefensible but I can see how someone might get from here to þere wiþout being fundamentally stupid.

Asked and answered

why not help improve the situation for every one, instead of just complaining about it?
i don't get it. we don't often get the chance or power to make things better like this.

Sir, this is a c/linuxmemes

I'm sure the OP is capable of doing multiple things at once.

Also, Krita is aware of the issue and is doing this intentionally. They set the NoDisplay=true option in the .desktop file so that users of DEs that are built to the freedesktop standards will not see this 'issue'.

The only people affected are the ones who are manually digging around their .desktop files, in which case they should be more than capable of understanding why these files exist and why it doesn't matter that there are multiple.

Why don't you file the bug report, since you apparently feel so strongly about it? Instead, you're not even complaining but meta-complaining, which is even worse!

Whereas I am meta-meta-complaining, the far superiour position. gigachad.jpg

I know this is a meme, but in case it's has a serious undertone, the question in this case is - who really cares?

Those are desktop files. You usually don't manually look into that folder in the terminal. It's not like a snap where your lsblk output is being cluttered.

This is such a minor problem that it's barely worth being talked about. It's a mere "best practice was ignored" case that has Z E R O impact on performance, maintainability or usability.

One of @FauxLiving@lemmy.world's comments linked to a bug report about it. Turns out the real reason is that Krita uses a plugin architecture that allows additional file types to be supported, so it can't actually know the complete list of MIME types to put in the .desktop file at application install time.

Krita makes it possible for plugins to extend Krita with additional file format support. Those plugins come with a desktop file that tell the desktop that krita can load those file types. Of course Krita's main desktop file cannot have the full list of supported file types, because that's implemented by plugins. Most of those plugins are shipped with Krita, but that is not necessary. People can create extra import/export plugins that still need desktop files so your desktop can know that Krita can load this file format.

I'm not completely convinced that's a good reason (compared to, say, having each plugin installation modify a single krita.desktop file or something), but I think it manages to upgrade it from "indefensible."

i don't even use krita? what am i? the bug concierge, just collecting people's complaints around the whole internet and file bugs for them?

Ok. You have a valid point. But hear me out here: what if we just use a bajillion desktop files instead? How many do you think this unholy contraption can hold?

I'm not sure about this case because I don't use flatpak that much, but to be honest I hate when I install an Electron based program such Freetube, and even though I installed the BIN binary (arch btw, not happened this on Debian based distros) for some reason my package manager decided to install the whole Electron framework with DE included. I get that it depends on it to work, but I don't need 40 Electron packages to show in my Wofi that I would never use, is so ugly. The same with Qt programs and any single KDE app (but I understand in this case)

I mean, yeah I understand that Freetube depend on Electron to work, but why when installing Steam this is not the case?

You're the one who's upset about it.

Krita has a fully nondestructive workflow, including alpha masks for filters. It's had it for fifteen years or so. GIMP is still trying to catch up.

My application menu did get cluttered with multiple krita entries.

Which was a minor annoyance.

but why when installing Steam this is not the case?

Because steam has no application-dependencies, it bundles everything into one binary, including the electron binary, and ships everything in one go. However, steam still has system-dependencies that have to be installed and will pop up in rofi.

I don't know if you're ragebaiting or are just a massive fucking asshole tbh, but when someone develops an application for free and for fun for anyone to use, I'm not complaining about too many fucking .desktop files.

Apparently it causes issues with "Open With" menu entry spam in some DEs. It's a minor issue but easily solvable and it impacts usability.

That would be a valid complaint, however, I just installed krita for testing on arch running with KDE and there's only one entry.

However, there's also only a single krita entry in the list of .desktop files so idk what exactly is going on there. Maybe under KDE, it behaves differently, no clue.

Yeah you're ragebaiting good one lmao

Sure, but what's the point of this comment here?

If that's the case, that would be a fair complaint that should be fixed, but I can't really reproduce any problems on KDE or XFCE. Then, it should also be reported as a bug so they're aware.

Relevance?

Agreed

This point is that Krita is pretty damned good.

While I agree that the seva should have looked out for it in the first place I think it being volunteer work and open source you or anybody else that has the time and knowledge could fix it too and give back. If it's indeed easily solvable.

It won't show up there because the files have NoDisplay set to true, which hides them from the desktop app view, but they still show up in other places. Here's Nautilus' open with dialogue (where I noticed this):

Okay but that would mean you have to open /etc/share/applications in a file explorer which you - usually - don't really do. Or maybe I'm just too much of a terminal guy to do it.

This isn't a directory, it's the list of apps that show up when you right click a file and select 'Open With'.

I guess it depends of a bunch of things, but why when programmers package a program don't do the same more often?

You misread me, man. I wasn't upset, just suggesting what I believe is the right thing to do.

Well, you sure sound upset, and you're downvoting both me and the other guy who replied to you, so...

lol. i am allowed to downvote if i disagree, am i not? is every one who downvoted me also upset?

sure, feel however you want to about me, it's not like i will ever able to prove i wasn't upset.

Please never delete application's .desktop files unless you created them yourself. It can confuse both you and your package manager. If you want some file type to never be opened by a program, override it's .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications instead.