[Bug 68835] Alacarte no longer works correctly with names containing spaces

[Alec Faithfull]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: alacarte

Attempting to create a menu entry which has a name containing a space
fails in several different ways; it doesn't appear in Alacarte until the
program is restarted, changes made to it (once it has appeared, that is)
are not reflected until the program is restarted again, and it doesn't
appear in the GNOME menu until the user logs in and out. (Creating menus
with spaces in their name works fine, however, as does modifying system-
provided items with spaces.)

This issue presents itself on a fresh installation of Edgy Eft on a new
hard disk, and wasn't observed on my previous Dapper Drake installation.
"alacarte --version" reports "Gnome alacarte 0.10.1", and the package
version is "0.10.1-0ubuntu1".

Modifying system-provided items seems to succeed because their .desktop
filenames don't contain spaces - i.e. "Orca Screen Reader and Magnifier"
is simply "orca.desktop". For comparison, a user-created item might have
a name like "Spaced Item.desktop". I don't understand Python, so I can't
check, but are shell commands perhaps being called without inserting
appropriate escape sequences into the filenames?

Steps to reproduce:
a) Open Alacarte however you like
b) Add an item to any group. The name should contain no spaces; it will succeed and the item will appear in both Alacarte and the GNOME menu, as you'd expect
c) Add another item to any group, but this time with a name that contains a space. An appropriate file will be written to ~/.local/share/applications, but the new item won't appear in Alacarte until you restart it and won't appear in the GNOME menu until you log out and log back in
d) Once the item appears in Alacarte (that is, you've restarted the program), try editing it; the changes will not be visible until you restart the program again

** Affects: alacarte (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Unconfirmed

-- 
Alacarte no longer works correctly with names containing spaces
https://launchpad.net/bugs/68835