[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#639996: Bug#639996: fastdnaml is not able to start in GNOME

[Andreas Tille]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2011 at 04:21:16PM +0200, melchiaros wrote:
> > "These programs are simple command line programs so what exactly should
> > we expect?  The freedesktop menu should just open a terminal and call
> > the program - nothing else.  Is there a way to implement this?"
> 
> It may be helpful to look at biolinux6 where it is implemented.

I tried a comparison

$ diff -u fastdnaml.desktop_biolinux fastdnaml.desktop_debian 
--- fastdnaml.desktop_biolinux  2008-08-01 00:00:00.000000000 +0200
+++ fastdnaml.desktop_debian    2009-09-04 14:09:29.000000000 +0200
@@ -1,9 +1,11 @@
 [Desktop Entry]
+Version=1.0
+Terminal=false
+Exec=fastDNAml
 Name=fastDNAml
-Comment=fastDNAml
-Exec=/usr/local/bin/fastDNAml
-Encoding=UTF-8
-Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/dna.png
-Terminal=true
+GenericName=Phylogenetic tree construction
+GenericName[en]=Phylogenetic tree construction
+Comment=Tool for construction of phylogenetic trees of DNA sequences
+Comment[en]=Tool for construction of phylogenetic trees of DNA sequences
 Type=Application
-Categories=Bioinformatics;
+Categories=Biology;Science;Education;


and tried to set the obvious difference 

   Terminal=true

in the Debian desktop file which just opened a terminal.  Would you
consider this a fix for the problem reported?  Regarding severity I
would call this at best minor if not wishlist.  The rationale behind
this opinion of mine is that I can not really imagine that anybody
honestly will start a command line program that way and then tries to
input full path to the data he want to process with this program.  I
admit that I'm not a user of fastDNAml - but I would strongly advise
not to use the program in this manner.

In my opinion the only reasonable thing to do in the menu is to fire up
a documentviewer / browser and *teach* people how to reasonably use
command line programs like this.  (I actually implemented this way in
the Debian Menu system for CLI programs in the Blends framework.)

> (Also with icons for all programs in the GNOME menu: Well a standard
> icon, but there are no free spaces).

Having some kind of a standard icon for such programs - possibly using
some common icon in the metapackage and linking to it might make some
sense.

Kind regards

       Andreas. 

-- 
http://fam-tille.de