Possible value types | Desktop Entry Specification

4 Possible value types #

The value types recognized are string, localestring, iconstring, boolean, and numeric.

Values of type string may contain all ASCII characters except for control characters.
Values of type localestring are user displayable, and are encoded in UTF-8.
Values of type iconstring are the names of icons; these may be absolute paths, or symbolic names for icons located using the algorithm described in the Icon Theme Specification (http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/icon-theme-spec). Such values are not user-displayable, and are encoded in UTF-8.
Values of type boolean must either be the string true or false.
Values of type numeric must be a valid floating point number as recognized by the %f specifier for scanf in the C locale.

The escape sequences \s, \n, \t, \r, and \\ are supported for values of type string, localestring and iconstring, meaning ASCII space, newline, tab, carriage return, and backslash, respectively.

Some keys can have multiple values. In such a case, the value of the key is specified as a plural: for example, string(s). The multiple values should be separated by a semicolon and the value of the key may be optionally terminated by a semicolon. Trailing empty strings must always be terminated with a semicolon. Semicolons in these values need to be escaped using \;.