Arch Linux User Repository

Apparently upstream removes the old package immediately when releasing a new version. So if you encounter a 404 error when building, just click on “Flag package out-of-date” above. Thanks!

jouke: Fixed, now that I can verify that it works. Thanks!

jouke: I guess jbbr didn't have time. I just tried it out, and on Cinnamon (my desktop) it does not work. Cinnamon may not support these desktop actions yet, so I have created this issue for clarification.

Is there any reason why my patch for a better .desktop file has not been applied yet?

Jake: Many thanks for the hint! If I start signal-desktop with LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 in the environment, I finally get German spell checking. But still it does not work with words containing an Umlaut (like Ärger or Österreich).

@buzo: Not quite true, Signal does support spellchecking with many other languages, if you open the devtools console you see for example:

Detected Linux. Setting up spell check with locale de_DE and dictionary location /usr/share/hunspell

That issue is just about improving the settings, currently there is only a global switch and no option to manually set a language or enable multiple.

So you could add all other dicts, but i am not sure if that would make sense, official packages usually don't have the language packages in optdepends.

I have changed the package to use the native (larger) spell checking dictionary. If you want spell checking, you have to install the optional dependency hunspell-en_US now.

Unfortunately no other language than US-English is supported by upstream. Please support this issue if you like to have that fixed.

@jouke thank you for the suggestion. Looks good to me. I will test and likely implement this in the next few days.

Continuing my previous remark, I suggest the following change to the PKGBUILD.

--- PKGBUILD.orig   2019-03-25 11:01:09.810858282 +0100
+++ PKGBUILD    2019-03-25 11:04:26.545938631 +0100
@@ -26,8 +26,12 @@
   install -d -m755 "${pkgdir}/usr/bin"
   ln -s /opt/Signal/signal-desktop "${pkgdir}/usr/bin"

-  # second desktop entry for starting in tray only
-  sed -e 's,^\(Name=.*\),\1 (Start in Tray),' -e 's,^\(Exec=.*\)%U,\1--start-in-tray %U,' \
-      "${pkgdir}"/usr/share/applications/signal-desktop.desktop \
-      > "${pkgdir}"/usr/share/applications/signal-desktop-tray.desktop
+  # desktop entry action for starting in tray only
+  cat << END >> "${pkgdir}/usr/share/applications/signal-desktop.desktop"
+Actions=Tray;
+
+[Desktop Action Tray]
+Name=Start in Tray
+Exec="/opt/Signal/signal-desktop" --start-in-tray %U
+END
 }

The change is visible for example in GNOME Shell, where currently there are two entries for Signal. After this patch there is only one entry, with a right-click option to start in the tray. This patch also improves application-matching, preventing that every Signal window is called "Signal (Start in Tray)".

I believe the additional .desktop file is not a proper implementation of the .desktop specification. Instead, the following should have been added to the existing .desktop file (see https://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s11.html):

Actions=Tray;

[Desktop Action Tray]
Exec="/opt/Signal/signal-desktop" --start-in-tray %U
Name=Start in Tray

nixpulvis: I just checked the latest Deb-Package from upstream: /, /opt, /opt/Signal, and all sub-directories are group-writable there. So it still makes sense to fix this in our build. You might file a bug upstream if this bothers you.