Xpra: Ticket #1961: easier start-command: expose applications

We can use python-xdg Menu to get the list of .desktop applications. And inotify to watch for changes. Then if the client supports it, we send the list of commands - and maybe inline a small version of the icon?

Then the start-command dialog can offer a menu.

(on mswindows, we could use Programmatically access All Users Start Menu, macos: not sure)

Sun, 23 Sep 2018 05:22:24 GMT - Antoine Martin: status, milestone changed

status changed from new to assigned
milestone changed from 3.0 to 2.5

Thu, 18 Oct 2018 09:04:35 GMT - Antoine Martin:

Done in r20699.

Still TODO:

test from win32 and macos clients
ideally, show the icon for each command using a CellRendererPixbuf, ie: http://python.zirael.org/e-gtk-combobox1.html

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 18:57:59 GMT - Mark Harkin:

Really like this feature but think it could be more accessible from the main tray menu. What do you think?

Forgive my horrible Python coding but a quick example is here: https://github.com/mjharkin/Xpra/commit/63daf5a7e48f704bf0e8df0462c3d7fcad7b0f02

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 12:01:04 GMT - Antoine Martin: owner, status changed

owner changed from Antoine Martin to Mark Harkin
status changed from assigned to new

Updates:

r20811 python3 compatibility
r20813: forward icon data, add "start" tray menu, etc..

@mjharkin: is that good enough? I've renamed the menu entry to "start" amongst other changes.

Still TODO:

some icons are missing - not sure why, especially for categories
the cost of sending the icons can be high (hundreds of KB), so it might be worth using a dedicated packet for "xdg-data" to avoid slowing down the initial "hello" packet - could also be used with inotify to send updates when the menu data changes (ie: application added or removed)
not sure we should keep the "start command" menu entry under server, it is mostly redundant now
we could recycle it to add a "custom command" menu entry, maybe at the bottom of the category list?

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 08:13:16 GMT - Mark Harkin:

I think start.png is missing from the r20813 commit. I've the same issue with category icons. Otherwise looks great. Thanks.

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 09:16:09 GMT - Antoine Martin: owner, status changed

owner changed from Mark Harkin to Antoine Martin
status changed from new to assigned

r20827 adds the missing icon
r20826 tries harder to find icons for all the applications and categories (ugly and slow filesystem glob since pyxdg doesn't seem to want to find them..)

The only other change I would like to get in this release is the move to a separate "xdg-data" packet.

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 06:37:55 GMT - Antoine Martin:

r20846 avoid errors with win32 clients: convert xpm icons to png server-side before sending.

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 10:13:20 GMT - Antoine Martin:

code made more resilient in r20850: found some xpm icons that pillow could not load, we now log a warning and continue without.

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 12:07:00 GMT - Antoine Martin:

r20853: load xdg data in the background so we don't slow down the first connection by loading the menus synchronously then
r20852: show which icon filename caused the error

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 12:07:33 GMT - Mark Harkin:

With the changes for xpm load failure handling r20850, if the icon fails to load there is no menu item created. Could this be changed to load with a default icon or no icon?

Thanks.

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 12:40:18 GMT - Antoine Martin:

mjharkin: try r20882, which should also fix the icon loading for tricky 'xpm' files: we now try loading with GTK first, and fallback to Pillow only if that fails. (and failures won't fail the whole desktop entry)

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 13:12:59 GMT - Mark Harkin:

Looks good. Icons load correctly now.

Thanks.

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 13:12:50 GMT - Mark Harkin:

XDG commands can also include %f %F %u %U placeholders. (https://portland.freedesktop.org/xdg-utils-1.1.0-rc1/scripts/html/xdg-desktop-menu.html)

I think it's best to remove them on the client side, incase we want to use them later on.

Something like this should fix the issue for now:

In gtk_tray_menu_base.py->make_applaunch_menu_item()

import re
...
command = re.sub('\%[fFuU]', '', command)

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 14:51:15 GMT - Antoine Martin:

mjharkin: thanks, applied in r20913. Yes, those could eventually be used to support "open with xyz on server".

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 15:05:54 GMT - Antoine Martin: status changed; resolution set

status changed from assigned to closed
resolution set to fixed

Packaging fix for win32 in r20966.

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 16:51:43 GMT - totaamwin32: status changed; resolution deleted

status changed from closed to reopened
resolution fixed deleted

Some SVG icons must have text in them, because the win32 builds moan about fonts:

(Xpra:4056): Pango-WARNING **: couldn't load font "Bitstream Vera Sans Not-Rotated 11.7294921875", \
    falling back to "Sans Not-Rotated 11.7294921875", expect ugly output.

Avoid SVG? Convert to bitmap icons on the fly? Find a way to silence the warning? Just ignore it?

Some relevant info: Pango unable to find fonts with librsvg

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 10:01:21 GMT - Antoine Martin: status changed; resolution set

status changed from reopened to closed
resolution set to fixed

Let's ignore the warning since we can't silence it: gobject-introspection: g_log_set_handler is not available

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 05:38:26 GMT - migration script:

this ticket has been moved to: https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/issues/1961