URL and application handling/registration standard

[Сергей Давыдов]

2012/9/29 Jerome Leclanche <adys.wh at gmail.com>

> It is up to the implementation to detect the mime type out of that
> protocol (eg. image/png out of http://example.com/foo.png), but on a
> practical level, file:// is special-cased to detect the mime type, and the
> rest is usually left to DEs with things like KIO and such. Correct me if
> I'm wrong on this one.
>

You're right at least regarding the practical level; this special-casing
exists and it's rather problematic for user experience.
Right now all http:// goes to web browsers and all kinds of mime types end
up being displayed in the web browser; for example, I'm forced to view all
pictures that people share with me in the browser even though EOG is
perfectly capable of handling http:// downloads and is much more suitable
for viewing images.

If the web browser doesn't support the given format, the situation is even
worse; the user is presented a choice: either to open the file right away
and never see it again, or to save the file for future use but not open it
right away. What if the user prefers to view the file first and then decide
if it's worth saving for later? I bet that's the most common use case.

I've realized this a few week ago and came up with a proposal on fixing
that. The basic idea is extending mimetype detection to protocols other
than file:// with a smooth transition from the current state. I've proposed
it to elementary project and got a green light on the basic direction from
their user experience team, so at least one party interested. The current
draft can be found at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kfI-JB80egEmix0HIJkDkDtMHGF_xeQMqQANqIxxnlo/edit#,
it's open for commenting and editing.

This problem is no way exclusive to elementary and I believe other
parties/DEs would be interested in fixing this too. I wonder what the
proper way of contacting developers/designers of other DEs is.

Also, a smooth transition from the current situation will require adding
one or several new keys in .desktop file; how do I request that? elementary
could just add X-elementary-* fields but I believe this should not be
DE-specific.

--
Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
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