Default Program | File Association

[David Faure]

On Wednesday 30 January 2008, Stanislav Brabec wrote:
> David Faure wrote:
> > On Tuesday 29 January 2008, Stanislav Brabec wrote:
> > > Mhall wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > * it wouldn't solve "gnome and kde want to start a different text editor" either.
> > > > Yes, I do see how that is a problem, especially since alternatives is global not per-user.  But then again, maybe a KDE user wants GEdit to open text/plain instead of Kate, you never know.  How exactly is this solved now?  Sorry if it's already been explain, I've only recently been paying attention.
> > > 
> > > KDE uses InitialPreference. GNOME uses defaults.list.
> > 
> > No, the "initial" preference is only initial: in the absence of user configuration.
> > If a KDE 3 or 4.0 user wants to use GEdit, the configuration module writes out a profilerc file.
> > In 4.1 it will be written to defaults.list.
> 
> System wide defaults.list is also only "initial" preference for GNOME.

Yes, but it only exists if someone (sysadmin or distribution) created it.
Not if you simply install both KDE and GNOME from sources.
This is the advantage of the InitialPreference solution: it works out of the box.

> > This problem is solved. What is not solved is the default order, when NO user-configuration exists,
> > but it was pointed out that the default order is desktop-dependent anyway, so the implementation
> > can stay desktop-dependent. I just don't want that installing a (gnome) applications means
> > that some script will automatically change defaults.list... The app itself can do it if the user clicks
> > "yes make this the preferred app", at runtime, then it's okay. But not at "make install" / apt-get / rpm time.
> 
> If KDE will start to use defaults.list, the OpenSUSE defaults.list magic
> has to be redone.

Either that, or OpenSUSE should provide no defaults.list at all....
OK this is not going to work in a backwards-compatible manner, I can see that now.
We are changing the meaning of defaults.list from "the system/distro defaults (possibly modified by user)"
to "the sysadmin or user preferences".

I think we should separate the two. How about we keep defaults.list for defaults, as the name indicates
(in fact those would keep being the gnome defaults and wouldn't be read by kde), and we use a new name, like 
applicationpreferences.list for the sysadmin & user preferences (that apply to all freedesktop implementations
reading this soon-standardized file)?

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).