Have a way to dynamically change software associations at distribution level

[Francois Gouget]

David Faure a écrit :
[...]
>> Then for example XFCE could multiply priorities of
>> apps with KDE/QT in categories by 0.7 and priorities of XFCE apps by
>> 1.5.
> 
> This could be a solution for "prefer native apps" indeed; but maybe it wouldn't
> give enough control to the distributions?

Having a multiplier seems very complex opaque to me: if my application 
has a priority of 7 and the XFCE application a priority of 5, which one 
is the preferred one? There's the rounding issue of course, but there's 
also an uncertainty on the multiplier value. Would XFCE, KDE and Gnome 
all use the same multiplier? Would SUSE's Gnome multiplier be the same 
as Fedora's or won't each Linux distributor be tempted to tweak it to 
'solve' priority issues?

Why not just say that if two applications have the same priority, then 
the desktop environment checks their category to select the 'native' one.

The Linux distributors can arrange to have the priorities set right on 
the desktop files they ship. Ideally this would even be agreed upon 
upstream for most applications (unless we see a priority race instead).

And at least, ISVs could trust the content of the InitialPreference 
field instead of having to second guess the multiplier that's going to 
be applied to them

-- 
Francois Gouget
fgouget at codeweavers.com