A launcher is the icon you click on to start an app.

To create a launcher, create a file in the directory /usr/share/applications named myapp.xml (replace myapp by the name of your app).

Here is a template :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<shortcut>
        <attribute name="title" value="My super app"/>
        <attribute name="description" value="Launch my super app !"/>
        <attribute name="command" value="mysuperapp"/>
        <attribute name="icon" value="applications/mysuperapp"/>
        <attribute name="category" value="accessories"/>
</shortcut>

• title : your app's title
• description : your app's small description
• command : your app's command. For example, it will execute the Javascript file /usr/bin/mysuperapp.js.
• icon : your app's icon. Icons are stored in /usr/share/icons/applications. For example, an icon with a size of 48 pixels is stored in the file /usr/share/icons/applications/48/mysuperapp.png
• category : the app's category. Categories are listed in /usr/share/categories.

You can add the attribute openMimeTypes to specify a comma-separated list of MIME types supported by your app. For example, if your app can open plain text files and PNG images, set it to text/plain,image/png. If your app supports all text files, you can use the wildcard : text/*.

        <attribute name="openMimeTypes" value="text/*"/>

You can specify the title of your app and its description in other languages by adding the lang attribute :

        <attribute name="title" value="gedit text editor"/>
        <attribute name="title" lang="fr_FR" value="Éditeur de texte gedit"/>
        <attribute name="title" lang="es_ES" value="Editor de texto gedit"/>
        <attribute name="description" value="Edit plain text files"/>
        <attribute name="description" lang="fr_FR" value="Éditer des fichiers texte"/>
        <attribute name="description" lang="es_ES" value="Editar ficheros de texto"/>