i have desktop icons run firefox go to different web sites, such as one to go here. the name shows up with 2 lines on the icon. i was setting icons up on 2 other users and copied the Linux Questions desktop file to the other users to use as a starting point. i made the names of the new icons have 2 lines, too. but the 2nd line just doesn't show up. something's different. can anyone tell me what that might be and how to fix it on the 2 new users? below is a copy of the .desktop file. i am running Xubuntu 18.04 with Xfce 4.12.2.

If the icon specified is not an absolute path then the icon lookup algorithm is applied on the icon name.

You mean this part?
I don't think this can work at all.

@ondoho. From the Desktop Entry Specification:

it works in the userid i am in to read the various forums i am active on. each forum has a desktop icon that starts firefox with the -P option specifying a different profile for each forum so i can have a firefox separate process open for each of them at the same time.

i'm trying to set up the same thing in 2 other userids i do cloud computing on so i can have similar firefox concurrency with separate processes. they are set up and working. but the names under their icons only show a single line. and that line cuts off at the \n in the Name string.

i don't understand how lookups and themes apply to this. i have not set a theme in any of these 3 userids.

it does work ... in the userid named "forums". but it does not work in the userid named "aws". it is apparently detecting the \n because i have an .desktop file with "Name=phil\nfoo" and it shows just "phil".

Sorry, I misunderstood you because of I understood this so as for you to have created two new .desktop files with changed Icon= keys. Something like Icon=My\nfirefox instead of Icon=firefox. I myself never refer to .desktop files as icons.

an icon shows up for each valid .desktop file i create in directory "~/Desktop". that understanding leads me to refer to one or the other. sorry for the confusion.

while i have a few decades or systems and programming experience (starting from mainframes in 1972), i have very little GUI configuration/setup experience. i have used GUI environments for many years, but i am pushing the boundaries now that machine speed is enough to use graphical mode (X) with an X terminal instead of text mode.

now that i "operate" in a GUI environment, i desired to "manage" my experience in more detail. for example, i've set up keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) to jump directly between users that are concurrently logged in (via dm-tool). likewise, other shortcuts jump between virtual desktops. i have 10 virtual desktops per user and 18 logged in users making for 180 desktops, 87 of which are running a nearly full screen xfce4-terminal. i hope to do some GUI programming, soon, too (most likely in Python version 3).

And nowhere does it say that this specifically applies to the Name= field.
I don't have a desktop, but I have .desktop files and when I add a "\n" in the Name= field, the text after the "\n" is not displayed anymore.
Makes sense to me, because that name is supposed to be a string without formatting, so that the file or desktop manager can format it as it sees fit.

shruggy, I appreciate your helpfulness and willingness to look things up for OP, I even appreciate you correcting others, but please make sure that a) you really understood what they meant before correcting them and b) your correction is actually correct. Thank you.

PS: re confusion about icons: maybe OP uses the term "Icon" in the sense that it includes both text & graphics?
If they meant only graphical icons I don't see how a sentence like "i made the names of the new icons have 2 lines" would make sense. However, the Icon= line in a .desktop file refers to a graphical icon only.

Two pages further in the spec, Table 2:

In that case all I can say is that I can reproduce OP's problem and it makes sense to me that strings with newlines are not fully displayed.
It could also be that the desktop or file manager does not fully implement the spec, or that the documentation is simply wrong on that point.

If OP's desire is to limit icon labels to a certain width, the setting for that should be in the desktop manager's preferences.

by "icon" i mean the things on the desktop display that have one little thumbnail size image and some small text below that image. each one comes from a file in directory ~/Desktop in the user home directory that ends with .desktop. i consider the .desktop file as defining the icon.

here is a screen capture of the icon how it looks in the "forums" user:
http://ipal.net/lq/20200528/20200528225259943947315.png
i moved most of the other icons away, but the LQ one was left right where it was.

here is the same exact .desktop file in user "skaperen":
http://ipal.net/lq/20200528/20200528224426367947578.png
see the one at the top.

these screen captures are both 1920x1080 (HD size).

it's all the same software at the same version upgraded yesterday. i cannot imagine the software coded to detect a specific user to do things different on, so it must be some setting somewhere.

Larger font? Different GTK theme? Different settings for xfdesktop?

Not necessarily.
You can also have normal files in ~/Desktop, they show up as well.

i have not changed the theme for any user. they are all the default. i have changed font sizes so i changed it to see the effect. enlarging the font pushes the "Linux Question" icon label from 2 lines to 3 lines. the "n" at the end goes to the third line when i change font size from 14 to 16. that's in user "forums". but in other users, no effect. going to extreme fonts just smashes the text to "..." but in just 1 line.


> You can also have normal files in ~/Desktop, they show up as well.

they show, but wrong. it doesn't seem to use any of the settings. they don't work. the image is all wrong. and the text it shows is the file name.