#55 Please create an AppData file for Parcellite

[Richard Hughes]

Please consider writing and installing an AppData file with the application description and some screenshots, else Parcellite looks really bad in the GNOME and KDE Software Centers. We'd love to showcase more applications, but without the extra data file we can't. See http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/appdata/ for details; thanks!

Richard

[rickyrockrat]

Richard,
I don't have a /usr/share/appdata directory in any of my distros (and I typically use synaptic):

Debian:Wheezy, Debian:Squeeze, Ubuntu:Natty, Ubuntu:Lucid, Ubuntu:Precise, so until I understand where this file is supposed to go, it's purely academic.

I have the file created, I think. Something like this?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Copyright (C) 2011-2014 by rickyrockrat <gpib at rickyrockrat dot net> -->
<application>
 <id type="desktop">parcellite.desktop</id>
 <metadata_license>CC0-1.0</metadata_license>
 <project_license>GPL-3.0+</project_license>
 <name>Parcellit</name>
 <summary>Clipboard History Manager</summary>
 <description>
  <p>
   Parcellite is an application that runs in the background and monitors the 
   clipboard(s), storing each copy in a list that can be chosen as the current entry later.
  </p>
  <p>
  This uses a hot key to pop up a history list. Clicking on an entry in the list will set that
  entry as the current clipboard selection. When the list is filled, it will start deleting the oldest
  entries. There is a persistent list that never goes away in addition to the normal history.
  Right-clicking on any of the entries in either list will allow you to move it to the other list. There are many settings
  on how to process text placed in the history (deleting whitespace, newlines, tabs, etc.). The entire history can be 
  saved to a file.
  </p>
 </description>
 <screenshots>
  <screenshot type="default" width="396"    height="633">http://parcellite.sourceforge.net/wp-content/uploads/preferences.png</screenshot>
  <screenshot width="396" height="633">http://parcellite.sourceforge.net/wp-content/uploads/preferences-display1.png</screenshot>
 </screenshots>
 <url     type="homepage">http://parcellite.sourceforge.net</url>
 <updatecontact>gpib at rickyrockrat dot net</updatecontact>

<project_group>Parcellite</project_group>
</application>

[Richard Hughes]

/usr/share/appdata is used by about 200 upstreams now; AppData is a newish standard, and so it could be on your system none of the apps are new enough to create it. On my Fedora 20 system I have:

[hughsie@hughsie-laptop gnome3]$ rpm -qf /usr/share/appdata/
gnome-contacts-3.12.0-1.fc20.x86_64
simple-scan-3.12.0-1.fc20.x86_64
gedit-3.12.1-1.fc20.x86_64
gnome-calculator-3.12.1-1.fc20.x86_64
baobab-3.12.1-1.fc20.x86_64
ghex-3.10.1-1.fc20.x86_64
gnome-documents-3.12.1-1.fc20.x86_64
epiphany-3.12.1-1.fc20.x86_64
gnome-music-3.12.2.1-1.fc20.x86_64
gnome-power-manager-3.12.2-1.fc20.x86_64
nautilus-3.12.2-1.fc20.x86_64
gnome-system-monitor-3.12.2-1.fc20.x86_64

So mostly GNOME stuff -- but as you can see from my original email I'm reaching out to other upstreams too. KDE are in the process of agreeing how to do AppData (with a few KDE specific tweaks) and XFCE has agreed too, but will do so for the next major release. This is how it looks so far:

Applications in Fedora with long descriptions: 214/1101 (19.4%)
Applications in Fedora with keywords: 104/1101 (9.4%)
Applications in Fedora with screenshots: 190/1101 (17.3%)
Applications in GNOME with AppData: 81/110 (73.6%)
Applications in KDE with AppData: 4/64 (6.2%)
Applications in XFCE with AppData: 0/20 (0.0%)

-- soureforge stripped out all the XML from your example, but the prose at least looks okay. Could you try validating it here? http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/appdata/#validate

Thanks!

Richard.

[rickyrockrat]

It's too new to show up in most distros, and what good is the software center if xml files have to be on the system before it's installed?

Screenshots are mostly only useful before something is installed, and requiring something to be in the local file system makes no sense for the use case I'm thinking of, namely one where the user browses the repository for new software to install.

What am I missing?