Proposal: database(s) of file types and URI schemes

[Thomas U. Grüttmüller]

Hello list,

When I get emails with a PDF attachment, Icedove (aka Thunderbird) tries 
to open it with The GIMP. This always makes me angry, because I would 
like it to open it with Atril (the Evince clone that preserves the menu 
bar), and I can’t find the right configuration option to change this 
behaviour. So my current “solution” is to open the file with GIMP, kill 
GIMP and then open the file manually, while it is still in /tmp.

Setting file types in ROX filer is pretty straightforward, but there are 
no defaults at all, and – as the example above shows – other programs 
don’t care about these settings.

So my idea is: it would be neat if there was a common database of file 
types, accessible by all programs, that contains information about which 
program to use to open files of a specific type.


The second issue is about URI schemes. I have noticed that Firefox has 
no idea how to open geo:, irc: or tel: URIs. It just responds: “This 
address wasn’t understood”. So I also propose to also have a common 
database of URI schemes, accessible by all programs, that contains 
information about which program to use to open URIs of a specific scheme.

Greetings,
Thomas