[Portland] xdg-open and default application launching

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On February 3, 2007, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> For terminal there is xdg-terminal in the CVS, but since it is not covered
> by the test suite yet, it is not in the release.

i just looked at it and it's exactly what is needed. great work! =)

> IMHO xdg-open directory for default file manager makes sense, what other
> application would be the _default_ handler for directories?

yes, that makes sense. the desired feature add is to open the default file 
manager with no parameters, so it will open to whatever the default URL is 
for that app. this seems to be covered by this:

> > what does everyone think about providing a way to ask xdg-mime, or even
> > another script?, to open the default app for a given use (terminal, web,
> > file management, etc) ...
>
> This is on our roadmap, target date April IIRC (I think Waldo has a list of
> the milestones we agreed upon at DAM3)

cool. i've let the fedora packagers know this and they are excited =))

i think we can expect this to be in the next release of fedora. if not 7, then 
certainly 8 but perhaps even 7 particularly if we can get the xdg-defaultapp 
(or whatever) script available in cvs in time.

i think having it in fedora will be a Big Thing(tm) for the obvious reasons 
(usage, testing, lsb, etc)

> > something i considered was to have a new branch in the mimetype database
> > called x-default/ (or something similar) so we could have
> > x-default/terminal, x-default/webbrowser, etc... `xdg-mime default
> > x-default/terminal konsole` would then allow xdg-open to open the file by
> > looking into the mime database?
>
> Just keep in mind that we want xdg-utils to be viable on already released
> desktops as well.

of course...

> If on future desktops work can be delegated to a desktop independet tool
> which happens to access the same database the desktop themselves use, all
> the better.

apparently there is exactly zero interest from the relevant GNOME developers. 
one of the fedora "managers", who is a GNOME user himself, talked to them 
about and the reception was not positive. =/

they basically took the opinion that the gnome/kde situation is like 
macos/windows: separate platforms so this doesn't matter. personally i think 
that's not a helpful POV, particularly for ISVs and those managing 
deployments with mixed desktops (e.g. google), but .... not much i can do 
about it. oh well, xdg-utils to the rescue! =)

> 1) installing launcher buttons on the panel, i.e. as an alternative to
> icons on the desktop (not necessarly the main panel, whatever the desktop
> uses for launchers)
>
> 2) filetype (MIME type) based actions in the filemanager context menus.
> Specific use case: offering a "Print" option on PDF files that call Adobe
> Reader with a specific commandline option

hm.. these are interesting topics indeed.. i'll file them in my mental list of 
things =)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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