Dennis,

> As I understand it, the GUI desktop manager uses .desktop files
> to populate the (right-click) menu for files.

That is what I assumed too.   But having searched the drive for files with a
specific name a few times and noticing that takes tens of seconds, if not
minutes, I could not imagine you could just place those .desktop files
anywhere.

Although the webpage you liked to talks about GNOME, I take it lxpanel uses
the same mechanism (it makes sense).

> Place this file in the /usr/share/applications directory so that it is
> accessible by everyone, or in ~/.local/share/applications if you
> only wish to make it accessible to a single user.
...
>GNOME monitors these directories for changes, so simply copying
> the file to the right location is enough to register it with the desktop.

(notice the last line)

So, the answer to my question seems to be "Yes". :-)   And thats good to
know (causes less "why doesn't it work?!" confusion).

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

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