Howto select proper Categories for .desktop files for games

[Hans de Goede]

Hi all,

As I already wrote yesterday I've got categorized game submenus for 
GNOME working / finished, see:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=230831

For the review request.


Know for this to be truly useful for many games the Categories field of 
the .desktop file will need to be updated.

So first some more info on how the Categories field is supposed to work, 
the document on this is:
http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html

The most important thing to know is that there are a couple of Main 
Categories, and that each .desktop file must contain at least one of the 
Main Categories in its Categories field, thus this is _wrong_:
Categories=ArcadeGame;
Right would be:
Categories=Game;ArcadeGame;

Also notice that there is no Application in the Categories field as its 
often seen, Application is not a valid Category, and X-Fedora is 
allowed, but useless, so also don't use that.

Besides containing at least one of the Main Categories and preferable 
exactly one, the Categories field may also include several Additional 
Categories. Valid additional Categories for an application with as Main 
Category Game are:
Emulator
ActionGame
AdventureGame
ArcadeGame
BoardGame
BlocksGame
CardGame
KidsGame
LogicGame
RolePlaying
Simulation
SportsGame
StrategyGame

If you install the games-menus package, then the game menu of GNOME will 
get a separate submenu for each of these Additional Categories.

So in order to clean-up the game-menu, each game .desktop file should 
contain:
Categories=Game;AdditionalCategory;

And then all RPG's would show up in the Role Playing Games submenu (if 
game-menus is installed), crack-attack would show up under Blocks Games, 
etc.

However, unfortunately, live isn't that simple, KDE already comes pre 
configured with games-submenus for some of the additional categories, 
but not for all of them, KDE by default has submenus for:
ArcadeGame
BoardGame
CardGame
KidsGame
LogicGame
StrategyGame

And thus is missing quite a few. Note that games-menus has been design 
to cooperate with the existing kde submenus and that installing it will 
give kde submenus for _all_ additional categories, just like under 
gnome, without showing some submenus twice.

The problem is however the kde case without games-menus installed, 
because then there are no submenus for _all_ additional categories, this 
has caused many .desktop files to only include the additional categories 
which are used by KDE.

The biggest "offender" in this case is ArcadeGame, on my system with 
games-menus installed the Arcade submenu won't fit!

Many games listed under arcade games are not truely arcade games, games 
like pacman, galaxian and 1942 clones are in my vision the true arcade 
games. However just removing ArcadeGame as sub category and adding a 
more appropriate one like ActionGame, would move the game under plain 
KDE from the Arcade submenu to the main Games menu.

To lower the number of games in the Arcade submenu and to allow 
coexisting with plain KDE, I've made the Arcade submenu from games-menu 
only contain games which have ArcadeGame as category and do _not_ have 
any other additional (game related) categories.

Thus for a game which now has:
Categories=Game;ArcadeGame;

But which really is an action game, but you still want it to show up 
under Arcade in the plain KDE case, you can write:
Categories=Game;ArcadeGame;ActionGame

Then it will show up under the Arcade menu with plain KDE and directly 
under the games menu with plain GNOME, and when games-menus is installed 
it will show up in the Action Games menu under both.

Notice that ActionGame is a similar very popular additional category 
Thus I've done the same for the Action Games submenu, it will only 
contain games which have ActionGame as category and do _not_ have any 
other additional (game related) categories. The exception here is 
ArcadeGame, if a game is both ArcadeGame and ActionGame according to its 
Categories field it will not be hidden from both menus because it 
contains an other additional category, it will show up under Action 
Games then.

Well thats it, a braindump of what I've done in / with games-menu and 
why, I hope this is understandable if not ask questions.

Regards,

Hans