Default Program | File Association

[Claes H]

> Not immediately related to the above, but it springs to my mind:
> Have you thought about having different associations for different
> actions? This is an extension to the discussion, and I don't know
> where or even if it is supported by any desktop, but I am sincerely
> missing it. What application to open a file with depends on the use
> case. For many file types the difference between "Edit" and "View" is
> relevant. One default is as good as another, entirely determined by
> what the user has in mind *at this moment*.   Of course, double
> clicking a file can only mean one thing, but I miss the ability to
> specify that .html files should be edited in emacs and viewed in
> Firefox, for example. A few actions like this could be standardized, I
> think it could enhance usability. Context menus with standardized
> options could benefit, for example.

I would like to add two more things:

First, my apologies for bad quoting in my previous email, which did
not attribute the quote correctly.

Next, I also found this discussion related to a recent thread at
kde-core-devel:  "KDE and the executable bit".

http://lists.kde.org/?t=120138121500003&r=1&w=2

which discusses what determines execution vs "opening" of files with
the executable bit set.

Possibly "Execute" could be a valid action for mime types of
interpreted file formats that do not support the #! syntax? Java jar
files comes to mind - some of them are as valid to execute using the
"java -jar" command, as opening with a zip utility. Depending on the
use case...

Claes



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