Default Program | File Association

[Alexander Larsson]

On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 13:48 +0100, Stanislav Brabec wrote:

> > Doing it with two different files is a very bad idea. I mean, what file
> > would a third party app use? And why should a kde and a gnome app
> > running in the same session launch different apps for the same files?
> 
> Doing it using XDG_DATA_DIR is also a bad idea - GNOME and KDE are not
> ready to install desktop files to different directories, if they share
> the same prefix. And you want to use KDE applications on GNOME (or vice
> versa), if there is no appropriate application in your desktop.

There is no need to install the desktop files in these dirs, they can
still go to a shared dir. Just the defaults.list file (and whatever
other desktop specific config stuff you need).

> I can imagine additional defaults.list section (backward compatible):
> 
> [Preferred Applications]
> KDE=amarok.desktop;gwenview.desktop;
> GNOME=totem.desktop;eog.desktop;
> All=mplayer.desktop

And say you're writing an application, for instance a web browser (not
really related to a desktop), how would you pick what application to
use? You'd have to do some (likely broken) magic to guess what
environment you're running in, or you have to hardcode things so that
you'll start the wrong application when you run in some other desktop.
Either of these is just wrong.