mime-type/application association spec

[Thomas Leonard]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 01:11:41PM +0200, Christophe Fergeau wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Since there didn't seem to have much activity to write a doc specifying
> how mime-type/application associations could be handled in a
> cross-desktop way, I decided to give a try at such a spec.
[...]
> Store all mime types in a single file (efficiency reasons => 
> multiple files = 50% slower (according to my totally unscientific tests))

You shouldn't be loading all the files. The database is split so you only
load the bits you need, as you need them. This should be much faster than
loading the whole database.

> user customization will be saved by adding attributes to the mime-type
> xml file indicating whether the corresponding type/info was
> added/removed/modified by the user

These are customisations for old applications that don't support the new
system yet, yes? Ideally, the user should not have to modify the database.

> Generic Handlers
> ================
> 
> Some kind of generic handler would be convenient: A whole group of mime
> type can be associated to a generic "text editor", this will makes it
> much easier for user  to change their default text editor. This can be
> achieved by having some "generic" .desktop files which only contain a
> link to another desktop file => what happens if the generic text editor
> is uninstalled ?

There was a suggestion of inheritance. Eg 'image/svg is-a text/plain'.

Possibly however, the two generic rules 'text/* is-a text/plain' and
'(^inode)/* is-a application/octet-stream' cover all the useful cases.

Plus allowing the user to manually specify loading any file into any
application, of course.


-- 
Thomas Leonard			http://rox.sourceforge.net
tal00r at ecs.soton.ac.uk		tal197 at users.sourceforge.net
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