Comment 44 for bug 334344

Some information was provided upstream, but the questions still haven't been answered:

> Michael Ventnor 2009-06-10 20:19:57 PDT
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but I find this a really braindead API decision:
> indicate_server_set_desktop_file
>
> 1) How are we supposed to find out where the desktop file is?
> 2) What about users who don't have a desktop file for Thunderbird or any other
> Mozilla application that will use this?
> 3) Why can't we set the name and icon of our application directly (and anything
> else the library reads from the desktop file)?

Also troubling from upstream:

> Martin Stránský 2010-01-06 07:07:59 PST
>
> Shat is the status of libindicate? If you want to support it, is it
> available/supported by any other linux distribution? Is it a part of any
> desktop environment? I can't find any Fedora package for instance.

> Ted Gould added the following comment to Launchpad bug #334344:
>
> The reason that we used the desktop file is becuase it provides a lot of nice
> information. The high resolution icon, the name, the description and those are
> already translatable. Desktop applications on Linux do have desktop files
> whether they get added by upstream sources or distributors. For instance,
> Thuderbird wouldn't show up in the software center to be installed unless it
> had a desktop file.
> We haven't uploaded the API documentation anywhere on the web officially. It
> is included in the libindicate-doc package. I have uploaded that here:
> http://people.canonical.com/~ted/libindicate/current/
> Hopefully that helps.

I couldn't find this comment in this bug... but if true, the lack of an officially presented API anywhere standard is a barrier towards anyone other than Ubuntu taking this up.