$ cat shortcut.desktop [Desktop Entry] Icon=text-markdown Name=shortcut Type=Link URL[$e]=file:///home/user/note.md $ dolphin shortcut.desktop results in opening note.md in the default markdown editor, but dolphin has an empty new tab showing "Loading cancelled". Expected behavior is to open shortcut.desktop without new tabs in dolphin.
The behavior is the same for any file, not just .desktop files That said, why would you pass a file to Dolphin in the first place? It's a file manager, so it makes sense to pass folders to it, but not files. I'd say the fact that it does something vaguely useful is more accidental than anything else
I see that clicking the desktop file in Dolphin also causes the view to change to "Loading cancelled". That's certainly not expected