Have a way to dynamically change software associations at distribution level

[Alexander Larsson]

On Wed, 2009-08-19 at 14:12 +0200, Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:24:04 +0200
> Didier Roche <didrocks at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Alexander Larsson<alexl at redhat.com>
> > wrote:
> > > Where does this leave us? One possible solution would be to tag each
> > > application with a set of desktops that is was "designed" for
> > > (DesignedFor=KDE). I.e. it would be KDE in core KDE apps, unset in
> > > "normal" apps and possibly have both KDE and GNOME in some special
> > > distro things that want to override desktop specific core apps in
> > > both distros.
> > 
> > So, taking Ubuntu as an example where FF is the default for Ubuntu and
> > Kubuntu (IIRC, not really sure for Kubuntu). We will patch the FF
> > .desktop file to add DesignedFor=GNOME;KDE; entry?
> 
> The way I understood is you leave out DesignedFor for DE-independent
> apps like firefox. The question is how this works when another neutral
> web browser is installed. Via InitialPreference in the "*all* desktop
> files" fallback?

The way I see it the upstream firefox would not have a DesignedFor key,
similar to any 3rd party app. But, if a distro decides that the default
experience should be firefox for browser in e.g. gnome then in this
distroy firefox is essentially "designed for" gnome and they would patch
the desktop file.

"designed for" is clearly not the ideal name here, i just picked
something. What it means is that its an app that is intended to go with
the experience of that desktop, and thus by default override all other
apps that handles this filetype. I don't even thing that e.g. all gnome
app would have "designed for gnome", just the once that make up the
"core desktop experience", not just "regular apps written using gnome
libs". Whatever this may means, its obviously a bit vague.