proposal request: virtual MIME types unknown in time of installation

[Stanislav Brabec]

Hallo.

As a package maintainer, I meet often with two calls for MIME type
virtualization.

1) Application uses back-end for file operations.

E.g. eog can open everything, what can provide gdk-pixbuf-loader
subsystem.

Using hardwired MIME type list in the eog.desktop is an ugly
work-around.

2) Application can open more MIME types using plug-ins.

E.g. gimp can open image/x-dcraw only if RAW photo plugin is installed.

Using hardwired MIME type list with MIME types for all plugins and
adding MIME type description XML file to plug-in is an ugly work-around.


Proposal:

eog.desktop:
MimeType=virtual/gdk-pixbuf-loader

Then let's have files like:
XDG_DATA_DIR/mime/packages/gtk+.xml
XDG_DATA_DIR/mime/packages/gdk-pixbuf-dcraw.xml
XDG_DATA_DIR/mime/packages/gdk-pixbuf-psd.xml

These files will declare, that virtual/gdk-pixbuf-loader will contain
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info">
  <mime-type type="virtual/gdk-pixbuf-loader">
    <provides type="image/x-dcraw"/>
  </mime-type>
</mime-info>


"provides" keyword should be similar to "sub-class-of" or "alias", but
virtual MIME type will be transparent to users and will have no
associated files.

The same approach can be used for plug-ins, defining MIME type
virtual/gimp-plug-in.

-- 
Best Regards / S pozdravem,

Stanislav Brabec
software developer
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