Why can't I Edit desktop file from Nautilus?

[NoOp]

On 07/28/2011 01:57 PM, Colin Law wrote:
> In ~/.local/share/applications are .desktop files.  If I view that
> folder in Nautilus and right click one of the files then I get an Open
> option but no Open With options so that I can open it in gedit (or
> whatever) for editing.  Is there a good reason for this?  This is the
> sort of behaviour one expects from an OS where the system assumes that
> it knows best, mentioning no names.
> 
> I know I can edit it from the terminal, that is not the point of the question.

You can open from gedit if you start gedit and use 'Open'. Or of course:

$ gedit <filename>.desktop

I suspect that Nautilus provides no edit association with .desktop files
because they are a '[Desktop Entry]' with an executable instruction. If
you right click one of the files & select 'Properties' you'll see that
it lists it as a 'desktop configuration file (application/x-desktop)'
and contains a 'Command:'.

One thing that's always puzzled me is that Nautilus doesn't even display
some files - example:

$ ls -al /home/gg/.local/share/applications
total 696
drwxr-xr-x  3 gg   gg   12288 2011-07-28 13:10 .
drwx------ 30 gg   gg    4096 2011-07-17 12:07 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 gg   gg     405 2010-05-19 21:19 AdobeReader.desktop
-rwxr-xr-x  1 gg   gg     460 2011-05-23 20:07 alacarte-made-10.desktop

the alacarte-made-10.desktop file isn't displayed in Nautilus.