Add cache for .desktop files. How? Few steps: 1. Store descriptions in one .dat file 2. Folder ~/.cache/xfce/applications.dat 3. Read all .desktop files (at X Desktop folders specification) 4. Parse 5. On next start compare timestamp of "applications.dat" and timestamp of X Desktop folders. It fast It speedup load. It more responsive. Idea redirected from https://github.com/gottcode/xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin/issues/60#issuecomment-31726600
Its a bit more complicated than that: 1) It requires a daemon to watch the .desktop files and folders to update the cache. 2) A tool to manually update the cache (ie trigger the daemon). 3) Drop stuff in garcon that reads the individual files and uses the cache. Now technically its nice to do this per-user, but like the gtk-icon-cache it should technically be handled on a system level. That said, loading the files takes time (obviously), but less than loading the icons with an out-of-date icon cache.
Closing old garcon bugreport. Please reopen if needed.