Bug#282281: kde: KDE applications take over Gnome file types

[Sebastien Bacher]

Le dimanche 21 novembre 2004 =E0 19:22 +0100, tmb@lumo.com a =E9crit :

> In both cases, you seem to be thinking in terms of what is convenient=20
> for a desktop computer used by a single person.=20

I don't think that "KDE applications work fine under GNOME" a something
to do with the number of users, but whatever, that's off-topic in the
discussion.


> It doesn't seem to be that simple. =20

It is with GNOME 2.8.

> There are also /etc/mailcap and /etc/mailcap.order

GNOME doesn't use them

> , and /usr/share/mime-info/=20

That's the old GNOME mimesystem


> and /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache.

and this one is the one used by GNOME 2.8.


>   And then there is
> ~/.gnome/mime-info/user.* (generated by gnome-vfs-mime-info and using
> yet another file format).

Still the old GNOME system ...


> different ways for determining which applications to launch. And then
> there is "shared-mime-info", which uses XML descriptors and interacts
> with the above in some other way.

shared-mime-info is used for the mime detection yes, but this bug is
about the app used for a given mime if I understand it correctly.


> (1) Gnome should have a predictable set of preferred MIME type handlers
> that are known to work correctly and that users get out of the box if
> they don't do anything else.=20

If an applications list a mimetype in its MimeType=3D that's because the
application is able to handle it correctly. If not a bug report should
be reported against this application.


> These may not be the applications you or
> I prefer, or the applications most users eventually use, but they shoul=
d
> be the applications that are least surprising, most usable, and most
> reliable.

This is a distro integration issue and the defaults.list is here for
that.


> (2) A mapping of MIME types to applications should never change for a
> user without explicit user interaction and consent (the only exception=20
> is if the application is missing or crashes, in which case the user=20
> needs to make an explicit new selection).

That's the current situation.


> (3) Developers should recognize that which MIME handlers are used depen=
ds
> on the context: the identity of the user, the installed set of
> applications, and the desktop that the user is currently running.

Yes, perhaps ... but not easy to do.


> text applications.  The only applications that should get offered to
> users as choices for opening files are those that are assumed to satisf=
y
> the Gnome interface guidelines; the user should have to take an explici=
t
> additional action (like selecting "Advanced...") in order to select
> possibly non-compliant applications.

Any app using MimeType=3D should correspond to this.


> (5) Users should be informed about the availability of newly installed
> MIME handlers and offered a choice.=20

You have a list when you right click on a file in nautilus, or the
properties/open with tab.


> (6) People should strive to make MIME handling consistent for the=20
> current environment: if I use Konqueror under Gnome, then Konqueror=20
> should use the Gnome MIME handlers for opening PDFs.  Ditto for Firefox=
.

You just have to set it once and that's ok. The system can't guess if
you want to use firefox or epiphany or konqueror or galeon or
whatever ...


> * In the short term, the Gnome and KDE package maintainers can perhaps
> figure out a way to avoid the phenomenon that I observed, namely that
> merely installing KDE seems to cause all sorts of things to change/brea=
k
> under Gnome.  Maybe merely for KDE to stop adding its applications to
> /usr/share/applications would do the trick.

You're trying to split desktop again, the new mimesystem is a
freedesktop work which is supposed to be a desktop unification ...


> * In the long term, Gnome, KDE, and freedesktop.org need to figure out
> better mechanisms for MIME handling. =20

That's already (almost) done.


>  I suspect we also need some
> common, desktop-neutral application launching API (freedesktop.org
> doesn't seem to have one yet) and we need to get applications like
> Mozilla to use it.

Just use a defaults.list ..


--=20
Sebastien Bacher