xdg-utils does not implement the standard for default applications

[Reuben Thomas]

On 3 October 2016 at 21:09, Maxwell Anselm <silverhammermba at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> I am willing to help develop these changes, but only if it is clear that
> such contributions would actually be welcome and accepted.
>

​This would be great to see.

​As an occasional xdg-utils contributor and sometime /usr/bin/file
maintainer, I'd say that it would be good to see more work on xdg-utils;
and that I think I can speak for file maintainers when I say that if file
can, within its obvious limitations (specifically, that it only identifies
files by their contents), ​be improved, patches would be speedily processed.

I'm unclear whether you think that /usr/bin/file *should* not be used by
xdg-mime (in which case, fair enough, I guess), or simply that it currently
provides the wrong types or mis-identifies files too readily.

Wrong MIME types in file's patterns can of course easily be fixed (I added
them only relatively recently).

Mis-identification is harder to fix, of course, but improved patterns are
always welcome, and in the absence of other methods of identification, it
seems to me a better fallback than nothing. It could perhaps be improved if
there were some way for xdg-mime to indicate a confidence level, as file
itself has "strength" levels internally which could be used to indicate a
degree of confidence, and, with a little work, it could for example not
return a match if it was below a certain level of confidence.​

--
​ ​

http://rrt.sc3d.org
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