>Who upstream is making this problematic? Is this a Debian-only 
>issue? Is this only a packaging issue? Please explain more. What 
>exactly is needed to provide remedy?
>
>Trinity is recognized as an XDG desktop. Upstream, whoever they 
>might be, need to get on board. I doubt "upstream" has failed to 
>support other XDG recognized desktops. TDE != KDE. :)
>
>I created a tdelibs patch and am rebuilding now. I'll start 
>testing thereafter.

I updated the patch by adding a -DWITH_OLD_XDG_STD configure option 
works great. No KDE4 apps autostart, no problems with desktop files 
in ~/.local/share/applications or $TDEDIRS.

Should upstream problems continue then this patch seems like a fair 
compromise until those problems disappear.

I have not tested by building tdelibs with -DWITH_OLD_XDG_STD, 
which retains the current dual behavior.

Darrell