Why is LibreOffice Startcenter hidden from Gnome?

[Coburn Ingram]

I looked at the issue you referenced.

It seems to me this is a simple confusion of terms. You do not have to
decide whether or not to block the Startcenter or the Math launcher in the
distro. You just have to decide whether they will populate in the dock by
default. The dock configuration is different from the launchers themselves.
The launchers live in /usr/share/applications. The dock configuration lives
in ~/.config/dconf/user. It is two completely different things. You do not
fix the pretty or not pretty of the dock by censoring the end user's
options. You fix it by configuring the dock that you want to set up by
default in the install process. Two different files.

I was thinking today that Ubuntu should probably install Gnome extensions
by default, and have the most popular extensions turned ON to begin with.
This is with a new install. It is kind of like getting a new Android phone,
and there is your clock widget, all set up for you. Ubuntu has a very
bare-bones philosophy about initial install setup. They are not big on
winning over new users with flash and presentation. If you remember the
days of Compiz and the rotating cube, that will kind of give you an idea.

OK, so this is what I am talking about. Setting up the brand-new Ubuntu
desktop to have a weather widget, or the removable device menu, or
Caffeine, enabled by default, would not be a big deal. I could do it. And
then if somebody complained about it, the right course of action of course
would be to go to the Gnome Extensions developers and have them ban those
extensions for all users, forever and amen. Right? No. The right answer
would be to tweak your install setup so that gnome-extensions is still
installed, but those particular extensions are switched OFF by default. Two
different files.

The correct way to have a launcher in the dock or not have a launcher in
the dock is to right-click and either add it or remove it from favorites.
The correct way is not to censor that launcher in the distro overall.

Thanks, and I hope that helps.
Coby

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:52 AM Gunnar Hjalmarsson <gunnarhj at ubuntu.com>
wrote:

> Hi Coby!
>
> On 2021-03-11 18:05, Coburn Ingram wrote:
> > Just a minor issue for me. I prefer to use
> > /usr/share/applications/libreoffice-startcenter.desktop as my launcher
> > for LibreOffice. But I have to edit the file to make it able to appear
> > in the launcher bar. Apparently, somebody had a meeting, and said, "No,
> > we don't want this launcher to work in Ubuntu. It clutters up the
> > desktop." I respectfully disagree. I would like this available as an
> > option to the end-user.
>
> Personally I agree. I made it a habit to have that launcher in the dock
> instead of three app specific ones. But suddenly it refused to show up
> in the dock...
>
> The background seems to be <https://launchpad.net/bugs/1696250>. But
> there they mostly talk about the number of LO related icons in "Show
> Applications". The use case where somebody (like you and me) wants to
> have the Startcenter icon in the dock seems not to have been considered.
>
> @Olivier: Any chance that hide-startcenter-desktop-file.patch could be
> reconsidered?
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> Gunnar Hjalmarsson
> https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj
>
>
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