The XDG Menu parser in KDE is, in at least one respect, much more forgiving, than the one in Gnome.

Given an example menu file:

<Menu>
 <Name>YYXXZZ</Name>
 <Directory>/absolute/path/to/directory/file.desktop</Directory>
 ...
</Menu>

..KDE will happily use it as a Directory file, i.e. a file which describes a submenu rather than an application, even though the file is incorrectly named, and even though the filenames inside <Directory> tags are supposed to be relative according to the standard.

Gnome 2.10 on the other hand, will freeze in a 99% CPU-consuming endless loop. 2.12 behaves better, but still won’t use the desktop file, instead showing the YYXXZZ, i.e. the name in the <Name> tag, as name of the menu.

If the desktop file is given as a Relative Path, and has a name that ends in .directory, and has a Type=Directory line, then it is used by Gnome.

KDE is, in this case, better at following Postel’s Law - “be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you put out”.

My Job is varied. Today I was reading the source code of Gnome. Last week, I was reading the source code of KDE. Personally, I run neither, but just a plain Sawfish.