From the It Came From Portland! dept.:
Nearly a year in the making, the OSDL and freedesktop.org today announced general availability of Portland 1.0, the first set of common interfaces for GNOME and KDE desktops. This support may be a small step for GNOME and KDE, but it's a giant leap for the Linux desktop.

These first common interfaces are a set of command line tools, xdg-utils. These first command line tools can be used by ISVs (independent software vendors) to help install software and provide access to the system while the application is running.

Specifically, these tools make installing and uninstalling menus, icons, and icon-resources easier for developers. They also can obtain the system's settings on how to handle different file types, and program access to email, the root account, preferred applications, and the screensaver.

desktoplinux.com | Portland Project