Getting the locations of desktop icons?

Is there a way to get the locations of the desktop icons in Snow Leopard? I believe each icon was a different window in Leopard, but this changed with SL.

Is there an API to do this or a file (like a configuration file) to parse?

Solution

As far as I can tell, icons on the Desktop appear to be an "AXImage". If you get out Accessibility Inspector (in /Applications/Utilities/Accessibility Tools/), you can examine the Accessibility information reported for items on the screen.

For example:

<AXApplication: "Finder">
 <AXScrollArea: "desktop">
  <AXGroup: "._sideEntrance.psd">
   <AXImage: "Untitled.icns">

Attributes:
   AXRole:  "AXImage"
   AXRoleDescription:  "image"
   AXParent:  "<AXGroup: "._sideEntrance.psd">"
   AXWindow:  "<AXScrollArea: "desktop">"
   AXTopLevelUIElement:  "<AXScrollArea: "desktop">"
   AXSize:  "w=16 h=16"
   AXPosition:  "x=106 y=412"
   AXEnabled:  "true"
   AXFocused (W):  "false"
   AXTitle:  "Untitled.icns"
   AXFilename:  "Untitled.icns"
   AXURL:  "file://localhost/Users/mdouma46/Desktop/Untitled.icns"
   AXSelected (W):  "false"
   AXEnabled:  "true"

The Accessibility APIs (the lower level ones, anyway), are part of HIServices:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/.../HIServices.framework

(You link against and import the ApplicationServices umbrella framework into your project, however).

I'm not that familiar with those APIs so I can't offer specifics, but that would be a place to start.

Hope this helps...