Have a way to dynamically change software associations at distribution level

[Didier Roche]

On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 11:25 AM, Didier Roche<didrocks at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 10:14 AM, PCMan<pcman.tw at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 4:33 AM, Didier Roche<didrocks at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>>> Well… I think you misread the beginning of this thread:
>>> - mimeinfo.cache is specific to GNOME, so no chance ATM that other
>>> desktop environments changes their behaviors to drop their own cache
>>> system;
>> I don't think this is gnome-specific. It's documented in "Desktop
>> Entry" freedesktop.org spec.
>> FYI: http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html
>> Besides, it's also used and well-supported by XFCE and LXDE.
>> So, it doesn't seem to be specific to gnome.
>>
>
> Oh right.
>
>
> BTW, KDE, as David previously told, seems not using this system. And
> it remains a cache file, so, no reason for distrib to patch it.
> In my plan, once the spec is written, We will update this cache file
> (and so, for all desktop environments using it) in patching
> update-desktop-database to make it taken into account the new priority
> level in *.desktop.
>
> Seeing if we need to add to this file, the priority number and the
> Category in a similar way that specific priority has been added to
> Mime-Type (ie using the same format "text/html;5;"), I'm not sure…
> Didier
>

Well, few days ago I wrote the corresponding spec, taking into account
also the mimeapps.list thing.
I saw this try on the website:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/mime-actions-spec and I
think that can be where we want to add the spec (even if we don't fix
the "mime-type by action (edit/view…)" issue). I didn't change the
wiki page ATM.
So here is my first draft:
http://www.didrocks.fr/temp/mime-actions-spec-0.1.html
I also changed the desktop-entry spec to reflect the needed changes
(see InitialPreference and MimeType items and "Priority of MIME Types
and desktop files").

If you wish to make any change, the .xml files are in the same directory.

I pinged Alexander Larson yesterday on IRC and pointed him to this
thread and the spec draft. I guess he will provide some feedbacks here
when he will have some time to catch up his mails :)
I CC also Stanislav to catch his attention on this proposal.

@PCMan: FYI, you linked to an old version of desktop-entry spec. I
guess only the last version is relevant. In this one, the
mimeinfo.cache part as been commented in the XML, so it's probably
been cut out of the standard.

Didier