I use a third-party application (gnome-latex) which will only launch if I run it from the Terminal (just running ‘gnome-latex’) or if I click ‘Launch’ within ‘Add/Remove Software’. Clicking on the application from ‘Show Applications’, or by searching for it in Activities, or from the dock, doesn’t work.
I’m not sure why clicking ‘Launch’ from within Add/Remove Software would be any different to clicking on the application’s icon on my dock or having searched for it in Activities. I’d be grateful for any advice to get the app running by just clicking on it!
I’ve been playing around with the desktop file. There’s an entry Actions=new-window;new-document;, with two sections underneath ([Desktop Action new-window] and [Desktop Action new-document]). Removing these sections and Actions, the application launches.
I’m not sure why it wouldn’t launch with those two sections (running desktop-file-validate over the original file gave no errors or warnings) but happy I can now launch the application by clicking on it.
I’ve one last question - will the desktop file likely be overwritten next time I update the application?
You should put your modified and custom .desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications so they won’t be modified by any updates, and these files will always be preferentially used by your user profile over system versions with the same names in /usr/share/applications.