XDG, xdg-open, and view vs. edit

[Rodney Dawes]

On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 19:25 +0200, Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Pat Suwalski <pat at suwalski.net> wrote:
> > Daniel Bo wrote:
> >> That said, I wonder why the choice was to set a default application
> >> for opening when most file types have view and edit modes. Why are
> >> there not xdg-view and xdg-edit (or --edit and --view switches on
> >> xdg-open)?
> > My opinion is that it's because most programs don't differentiate
> > between editing and viewing. You start the program with a file parameter
> > and then you can do anything. In that respect, you're "Open"ing the file
> > just like from the File->Open menu.
> 
> While this is true you might need two separate applications for
> editing and viewing files. Also at times you might want to
> programmatically determine if there is a viewer/editor available (for
> example it does not make sense for an "edit" button to open a PDF file
> in Evince).

Unless it's a PDF form, which you are editing...