Default Program | File Association

[Alexander Larsson]

On Fri, 2008-01-25 at 13:34 +0100, David Faure wrote:
> On Friday 25 January 2008, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > 
> > On Fri, 2008-01-25 at 11:21 +0100, David Faure wrote:
> > 
> > > After discussion with Alexander on IRC we came to the following adjustement:
> > > 
> > > * being able to add an application to a mimetype in defaults.list even if the application
> > > .desktop file does not mention this mimetype. This removes the need for making local
> > > copies of desktop files.
> > > 
> > > * being able to remove associations, in the defaults.list file, using a separate group like this:
> > > [Removed Associations]
> > > image/x-xwindowdump=kview.desktop;    
> > > 
> > > This way the app-mime association list is fully editable (you can add and remove),
> > > and no duplication of system settings is done (so if the sysadmin updates his higher-level
> > > defaults.list you'll still get those changes, except for the associations that have been
> > > explicitely removed this way).
> > 
> > I've just implemented this in glib svn. It works very nicely. 
> > 
> > However there is one small issue. If you add an association (as opposed
> > to setting the default) via the users defaults.list that will
> > automatically override the default in the system defaults.list. It can
> > be worked around by copying the list from the system defaults.list into
> > the user defaults.list when doing this operation, but thats suboptimal,
> > as it means the user won't see order changes happening in the system
> > defaults.list later.
> 
> But I would say that when the user adds an association, either
> 1) he/she only sees that association (e.g. the "remember this application" checkbox kind of GUI)
> and then making it the default makes sense.
> 2) or he/she is seeing the full list of applications associated with that mimetype, and when
> adding the new application to that list, he/she is deciding where it goes in that list (top, bottom, middle);
> and then saving the whole list to defaults.list isn't so wrong, it saves exactly the order that user just chose.
> Changes happening to the system defaults.list later on (by a sysadmin) will still respect the
> default app seen by the user when adding the application...
> 
> I do see your point of course, I'm not against a fix for it, I'm just saying that the current
> situation is "good enough" for me given the GUI we offer for this.

Nah, I agree with you. Its good enough.