how to use "Desktop Entry" files?

[Roland Plüss]

i noticed that xfce uses in his system generated list ( the one with
'include --system--' ) .desktop files ( or Desktop Entry files ) from
KDE from the /usr/share/applications directoy to populate this menu. i
tried now to create such files myself for apps which are not yet in that
listing but that i would like to have there ( including existing ones
and my own ). now i did a simply copy-modify to create an entry for
NEdit for example. although the entry is fine and KDE finds it XFCE does
not ( even after restarting X and restarting the entire machine ).

can somebody give me a hint why i can not create my own .desktop files
in /usr/share/applications with XFCE using them? do i need to update a
database? or is there a special config file hidden somewhere that i have
to mess around with?
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