Created attachment 6244 example .desktop file This is a whisker bug: Whisker doesn't handle escaped spaces in exec file_paths correctly. I attached a desktop file that I placed in /usr/share/applications/ Whisker complains that it cannot execute /opt/Sublime rather than /opt/Sublime Text 3/sublime_text as it should, even though the spaces in the directory name are escaped. If I execute the file through thunar, then it works just fine If I put quotes (" ") around the exec line then the whisker entry works just fine, but thunar and my desktop show an error that it cannot find the file. example file is attached the exed line: Exec=/opt/Sublime\ Text\ 3/sublime_text I hope you can fix it ;) Regards, Felix PS: it would be nice if you could add a way to add existing .desktop files to the menu through whisker itself so that I don't need to move it manually to /usr/share/applications/ with the terminal
Technically, the .desktop file you are using is invalid. Also, Whisker Menu doesn't parse the .desktop files. That is done by garcon, which is where this bug should have been reported. According to the desktop entry spec [1][2], you are supposed to double escape space characters in the Exec key because it is of the type "string", which requires backslashes before spaces, and then you must escape backslashes in the Exec key. It is confusing, but you are supposed to use *two* backslashes instead of one: Exec=/opt/Sublime\\ Text\\ 3/sublime_text Exec=/opt/Sublime\\ Text\\ 3/sublime_text -n Exec=/opt/Sublime\\ Text\\ 3/sublime_text --command new_file If you prefer double quoting, do not quote the whole Exec line. Just quote the executable and path. Again, blame the desktop specification. Each argument can be double quoted and then separated by spaces: Exec="/opt/Sublime Text 3/sublime_text" Exec="/opt/Sublime Text 3/sublime_text" -n Exec="/opt/Sublime Text 3/sublime_text" --command new_file [1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html#value-types [2] http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html#exec-variables