Cross-desktop helpers

[Tim Ringenbach]

Chas Honton wrote:

>
> Shaun McCance wrote:
>
>> No, I don't think so.  People aren't going to have the sound recorder
>> set as the default handler for WAV files.  And even if they did, the
>> order or operations is all wrong.  You don't open a WAV file with the
>> sound recorder.  You call the sound recorder, and get a WAV file back
>> from it.  (Well, all right, if you're calling it from an application,
>> you probably need to give it a location under /tmp or something, so you
>> can read the file back into your program.) 
>
>
> On windows, the registry has seperate commands per action. There has 
> been talk of the xdg mime database supporting action verbs other than 
> "open".  So the sound recorder could be found with a mimetype audio or 
> audio/wav, action "edit".
>
IMO, having an "open" verb is wrong. Open is too ambiguous. Users don't 
want to open files, they want to view files, or edit files, etc. No one 
opens a file for the sake of opening it, it's always for a reason. 
Granted, you don't always know what a user wants, so one verb needs to 
be default, per mimetype. There could also be a "new" verb, e.g. this 
application can create a new file/new data of the given mime type.

--Tim