Cross-desktop helpers

[Tim Ringenbach]

nf wrote:

>On Thu, 2004-12-09 at 22:00, Alex Graveley wrote: 
>  
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I really want a way to make my users happy.  XDG's charter is to provide
>>the mechanism for this.  Yet I still have no desktop-neutral way of
>>accomplishing the following:
>>
>>	* opening a file browser for a given local directory
>>	* opening a web browser
>>	* opening an email composer
>>
Pretty much all of these are url protocols. You could rewrite that list:
    * file:///
    * http://, https://, ftp://
    * mailto:

Are there ones that don't fall into this catagory?

>>
>>How can we fix this?
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Isn't that something that should be handled by a "Common-VFS" library?
>
>http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gnome-vfs-2.0/gnome-vfs-20-gnome-vfs-mime-database.html#gnome-vfs-mime-get-all-applications See function: gnome_vfs_mime_get_default_application ()
>And for KDE:
>http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/3.3-api/kio/html/classKRun.html
>  
>
Not really, rather this is somethign that should be a spec implemented 
by gnome-vfs, kio, "Common-VFS", and anything else that wishes to 
provide these abilities. Of course all of them could be using some 
shared code or something. I'm not sure this is really something that has 
to or even belongs in a VFS library, it could just as easily be its own 
thing. But since it *is* in the VFS libraries, it's probably going to 
stay there, even if the underlying implementation chagnes.

>Where do desktops store "default_application" settings internally? Not
>in a standardized place i suppose.
>
Not sure.

>Are environment variables the right way to fix this? What if you change
>the default web-browser? Do you have to log out and log in again that
>all applications recognize the change?
>
>  
>
I think env variables are an ugly hack of a way to do this. This belongs 
as part of or a companion of, the mime type/programs association spec. 
How's this spec coming along, is any progress being made?
Does and/or should it include url protocol registration and handling?
Will it be able to handle more dynamic things like registering aim: with 
gaim-remote only while gaim is running?


--Tim