mime apps specification

[David Faure]

On Thursday 03 April 2014 01:39:27 Luc Menut wrote:
> The previous freedesktop specification was
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/mime-actions-spec
> I guess it will be deprecated by the current proposal.

Yes. That wasn't even a spec, just a current state of affairs :)
As soon as I push the spec I'll update that wiki page to point to the spec.

> What about KDE's InitialPreference and Gnome's defaults.list?
> IIUC, I guess that they are deprecated too, and will be respectively
> replaced by kde-mimeapps.list and gnome-mimeapps.list.

Yes.

> But at which level? "application vendors" (= $XDG_DATA_HOME/applications)?

No. Application here means ISVs. E.g. if a third-party application like Skype, 
Google Earth, etc. absolutely wants to make itself default upon installation.

The recommended location for the initial kde-mimeapps.list and gnome-
mimeapps.list provided by the distribution (or by kde/gnome themselves when 
compiling from source) is $XDG_DATA_DIRS/applications/$xdc-mimeapps.list

> The proposed lookup order = preferences order is
> users > sys-admin > vendors > distribution

Depends what you mean by vendor. If you mean KDE, it's part of the 
distribution. If you mean Skype, it's at the same level as sysadmins.

> If desktop environments install their default preferences
> ($xdc-mimeapps.list) at vendors level, desktop environments preferences
> will override distribution preferences (when they overlap).

No, distributions will adjust the desktop environment preferences.

> Then, if a distribution wants to modify a desktop environment preference
> for a mimetype, the only way seems to patch the desktop environment
> $xdc-mimeapps.list? or have I missed something?

Yes. Is there a strong need to keep the "upstream mimeapps.list" unchanged? It 
just seems to add yet another level in the list, which is already quite big.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, http://www.davidfaure.fr
Working on KDE, in particular KDE Frameworks 5