KUbuntu 10.04 / Dolphin File Manager: Is there a way to make .desktop files display the filename the same as the NAME= in the metadata?

Question

As shown in the below screenshot (sorry I couldn't make it inline - Seems points on other stackexchange subforums don't count here), if I have a Folder Widget setup to point to the Desktop "place", the .desktop files appear with the filename of the Name= value in the file.

http://imgur.com/FGTZh

However, if I browse to this folder in Dolphin / make the Folder Widget point to the absolute path to the desktop / Click "Open in Dolphin" in the context menu of the Folder Widget pointing to the absolute path to the desktop, I get the real filename of the .desktop file:

http://imgur.com/DNAwR

Is this a changeable setting, or hard-coded?

Answer 1

I think it's not possible. This behavior is hardcoded.

When you are opening your Desktop in the way that you showed on first screenshot you are opening location desktop:/ (you can type that address in URI bar in Konqueror or Dolphin to check it). Handler for this pseudoprotcol is KDE component (kioslave) named kio_desktop. When you open normal location Dolphin is using kioslave kio_file (for file:/ protocol).

In source code of kio_desktop there is a special function that is responsible for handling desktop files. In line 229 you can find code that hide extension by removing last 8 characters from displayed filename.

In code of kio_file there is no reference to desktop file, so I'm assuming that kio_file treats .desktop as normal files.

Answer 2

This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but you can just rename the icon files themselves eliminating the .desktop extension (and changing the file name in any way desired) and they should still work fine. I think they will then display the way you want them to.

The desktop widget uses the properties (metadata) in the icon files, but dolphin (and probably any other file manager) just looks at the file entry itself - not its content.

For future reference, you can also take a look at this when working with the metadata:

http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html

It explains what all those entries are used for.