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How to manually create a launcher in Gnome
Published in mydebian.blogdns.org - 24-06-2008
Launchers are just desktop icons that when double clicked, will execute a given command. They are so useful in a frenzied desktop environment.
In gnome, you can create one by just clicking the right button of your mouse on a free area on the desktop and then selecting “Create a new Launcher”.
However, this practicity often causes a sense of boredom in some uncommon human beings.
Luckily for them, a launcher is just a common file with some simple characteristics and thus it can be made using any familiar unix editor.
In order to manually create a launcher you first have to add an empty file in ~/Desktop with the extension .desktop. The content of this file is regulated by a specification (see references on bottom of the page) but is very easy to learn: first line must be [Desktop Entry]; then each line must be like Var=value where Var is one of the allowed (capitalised) names and value is choosen by you.
Here is the simplest launcher with an icon for running xterm:
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application
Name=run xterm, please!
Description=this is a description
Icon=xterm.png
Exec=/usr/bin/xterm
In this example, we get a launcher having xterm.png as the icon, “run xterm, please!” as the name, and that will run xterm when clicked. Please notice, that the above example is extremely case sensitive; that is, nautilus won’t accept neither “type=application” nor “Type=application” or else. If your home-made launcher doesn’t run, chances are good that you used a wrong lower case.
You can create as many launchers as you need: it’s free!
References:
- Desktop Entry specification on freedesktops.org;
- launcher properties on gnome.org
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