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

[Thomas U. Grüttmüller]

Hi

On 29.08.2017 06:33, Vladimir Kudrya wrote:
> Things you describe already exist:
> https://specifications.freedesktop.org/mime-apps-spec/latest/
> and 'x-scheme-handler' notation is there for uri's.
>
> The problem is that Firefox and Thunderbird do not follow the spec
> properly.
>
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296443 this bug is still
> 'new'.

So there is a common database, but Thunderbird ignores it. Okay, then 
for now the best way seems to be to configure it manually in 
Thunderbird: Edit→Preferences→Attachments→Incoming.

Thank you for the links. The whole thing looks very complicated; I was 
expecting something simple like this:

*.pdf: atril, gimp, xpdf
*.xcf: gimp
*.gif: eog, firefox, gimp

In this case the first entry would be the default.

…But in reality, there is one one database that defines the file 
extensions of mime types, one database that defines the mime types each 
program can handle and one database that defines the default program, if 
there are more than one. That looks really complicated.

I still have some questions:

1. Is there an API, or will the individual programs have to manually 
parse these files?

2. I can imagine a problem when several file types share the same 
extension. *.doc can be a Microsoft Word file or a GST 1st WordPlus file 
or a plain text file. Is there a solution to this?

3. One solution would be that different system users interpret the 
extensions differntly. Is it possible to customize the MIME-info 
database on a per-user base?

4. Some programs are installed locally in a user’s home directory. Is it 
possible to create *.desktop files that are used only by one user?
Where would they go?

5. Some system wide *.desktop files might be annoying to certain users. 
Is there a way a user may blacklist them?

6. Are there graphical tools to configure these things?

Greetings,
Thomas