<heading>Menus</heading>
<p>
- Packages shipping applications that comply with minimal requirements
- described below for integration with desktop environments should
- register these applications in the desktop menu, following the
- <em>FreeDesktop</em> standard, using text files called
- <em>desktop entries</em>. Their format is described in the
- <em>Desktop Entry Specification</em> at
- <url id="http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/">
- and complementary information can be found in the
- <em>Desktop Menu Specification</em> at
- <url id="http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/">.
+ The Debian <tt>menu</tt> package provides a standard
+ interface between packages providing applications and
+ <em>menu programs</em> (either X window managers or
+ text-based menu programs such as <prgn>pdmenu</prgn>).
</p>
<p>
- The desktop entry files are installed by the packages in the
- directory <file>/usr/share/applications</file> and the FreeDesktop
- menus are refreshed using <em>dpkg triggers</em>. It is therefore
- not necessary to depend on packages providing FreeDesktop menu
- systems.
+ All packages that provide applications that need not be
+ passed any special command line arguments for normal
+ operation should register a menu entry for those
+ applications, so that users of the <tt>menu</tt> package
+ will automatically get menu entries in their window
+ managers, as well in shells like <tt>pdmenu</tt>.
</p>
<p>
- Entries displayed in the FreeDesktop menu should conform to the
- following minima for relevance and visual integration.
-
- <list>
- <item>
- Unless hidden by default, the desktop entry must point to a PNG
- or SVG icon with a transparent background, providing at least
- the 22×22 size, and preferably up to 64×64. The icon
- should be neutral enough to integrate well with the default icon
- themes. It is encouraged to ship the icon in the default
- <em>hicolor</em> icon theme directories, or to use an existing
- icon from the <em>hicolor</em> theme.
- </item>
-
- <item>
- If the menu entry is not useful in the general case as a
- standalone application, the desktop entry should set the
- <tt>NoDisplay</tt> key to <var>true</var>, so that it can be
- configured to be displayed only by those who need it.
- </item>
-
- <item>
- In doubt, the package maintainer should coordinate with the
- maintainers of menu implementations through the
- <em>debian-desktop</em> mailing list in order to avoid problems
- with categories or bad interactions with other icons. Especially
- for packages which are part of installation tasks, the contents
- of the <tt>NotShowIn</tt>/<tt>OnlyShowIn</tt> keys should be
- validated by the maintainers of the relevant environments.
- </item>
- </list>
+ Menu entries should follow the current menu policy.
</p>
<p>
- Since the FreeDesktop menu is a cross-distribution standard, the
- desktop entries written for Debian should be forwarded upstream,
- where they will benefit to other users and are more likely to
- receive extra contributions such as translations.
+ The menu policy can be found in the <tt>menu-policy</tt>
+ files in the <tt>debian-policy</tt> package.
+ It is also available from the Debian web mirrors at
+ <tt><url name="/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/"
+ id="http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/"></tt>.
</p>
- <p>
- Packages can, to be compatible with Debian additions to some window
- managers that do not support the FreeDesktop standard, also provide a
- <em>Debian menu</em> file, following the <em>Debian menu policy</em>,
- which can be found in the <tt>menu-policy</tt> files in the
- <tt>debian-policy</tt> package. It is also available from the Debian
- web mirrors at <tt><url name="/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/"
- id="http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/"></tt>.
+ <p>
+ Please also refer to the <em>Debian Menu System</em>
+ documentation that comes with the <package>menu</package>
+ package for information about how to register your
+ applications.
</p>
</sect>
<heading>Multimedia handlers</heading>
<p>
- Media types (formerly known as MIME types, Multipurpose Internet Mail
- Extensions, RFCs 2045-2049) is a mechanism for encoding files and
- data streams and providing meta-information about them, in particular
- their type and format (e.g. <tt>image/png</tt>, <tt>text/html</tt>,
- <tt>audio/ogg</tt>).
+ MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, RFCs 2045-2049)
+ is a mechanism for encoding files and data streams and
+ providing meta-information about them, in particular their
+ type (e.g. audio or video) and format (e.g. PNG, HTML,
+ MP3).
</p>
<p>
- Registration of media type handlers allows programs like mail
+ Registration of MIME type handlers allows programs like mail
user agents and web browsers to invoke these handlers to
- view, edit or display media types they don't support directly.
+ view, edit or display MIME types they don't support directly.
</p>
<p>
- There are two overlapping systems to associate media types to programs
- which can handle them. The <em>mailcap</em> system is found on a
- large number of Unix systems. The <em>FreeDesktop</em> system is
- aimed at Desktop environments. In Debian, FreeDesktop entries are
- automatically translated in mailcap entries, therefore packages
- already using desktop entries should not use the mailcap system
- directly.
+ Packages which provide programs to view/show/play, compose, edit or
+ print MIME types should register them as such by placing a file in
+ <manref name="mailcap" section="5"> format (RFC 1524) in the directory
+ <file>/usr/lib/mime/packages/</file>. The file name should be the
+ binary package's name.
</p>
- <sect1 id="media-types-freedesktop">
- <heading>Registration of media type handlers with desktop entries</heading>
-
- <p>
- Packages shipping an application able to view, edit or point to
- files of a given media type, or open links with a given URI scheme,
- should list it in the <tt>MimeType</tt> key of the application's
- <qref id="menus">desktop entry</qref>. For URI schemes,
- the relevant MIME types are <tt>x-scheme-handler/*</tt> (e.g.
- <tt>x-scheme-handler/https</tt>).
- </p>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="mailcap">
- <heading>Registration of media type handlers with mailcap entries</heading>
-
- <p>
- Packages that are not using desktop entries for registration should
- install a file in <manref name="mailcap" section="5"> format (RFC
- 1524) in the directory <file>/usr/lib/mime/packages/</file>. The
- file name should be the binary package's name.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- The <package>mime-support</package> package provides the
- <prgn>update-mime</prgn> program, which integrates these
- registrations in the <file>/etc/mailcap</file> file, using dpkg
- triggers<footnote>
- Creating, modifying or removing a file in
- <file>/usr/lib/mime/packages/</file> using maintainer scripts will
- not activate the trigger. In that case, it can be done by calling
- <tt>dpkg-trigger --no-await /usr/lib/mime/packages</tt> from
- the maintainer script after creating, modifying, or removing
- the file.
- </footnote>.
-
- <p>
- Packages installing desktop entries should not install mailcap
- entries for the same program, because the
- <package>mime-support</package> package already reads desktop
- entries.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Packages using these facilities <em>should not</em> depend on,
- recommend, or suggest <prgn>mime-support</prgn>.
- </p>
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="file-media-type">
- <heading>Providing media types to files</heading>
-
- <p>
- The media type of a file is discovered by inspecting the file's
- extension or its <manref name="magic" section="5"> pattern, and
- interrogating a database associating them with media types.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- To support new associations between media types and files, their
- characteristic file extensions and magic patterns should be
- registered to the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). See
- <url id="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types"> and RFC 6838
- for details. This information will then propagate to the systems
- discovering file media types in Debian, provided by the
- <package>shared-mime-info</package>,
- <package>mime-support</package> and <package>file</package>
- packages. If registration and propagation can not be waited for,
- support can be asked to the maintainers of the packages mentioned
- above.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- For files that are produced and read by a single application, it
- is also possible to declare this association to the
- <em>Shared MIME Info</em> system by installing in the directory
- <file>/usr/share/mime/packages</file> a file in the XML format
- specified at <url id="http://standards.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/latest/">.
- </p>
- </sect1>
+ <p>
+ The <package>mime-support</package> package provides the
+ <prgn>update-mime</prgn> program, which integrates these
+ registrations in the <file>/etc/mailcap</file> file, using dpkg
+ triggers<footnote>
+ Creating, modifying or removing a file in
+ <file>/usr/lib/mime/packages/</file> using maintainer scripts will
+ not activate the trigger. In that case, it can be done by calling
+ <tt>dpkg-trigger --no-await /usr/lib/mime/packages</tt> from
+ the maintainer script after creating, modifying, or removing
+ the file.
+ </footnote>.
+ Packages using this facility <em>should not</em> depend on,
+ recommend, or suggest <prgn>mime-support</prgn>.
+ </p>
</sect>
<sect>
projects / debian / debian-policy.git / commitdiff