New `MimeType` fields in .desktop

[Thomas Kluyver]

On Wed, 17 Feb 2021, at 16:42, Jehan Pagès wrote:
> Yes! Finally someone who reads emails before answering. :-)

I'll just note that this isn't a particularly useful tone in a discussion that already feels heated. I actually haven't read your emails particularly closely, I just think I've happened to pick up your general idea. ;-)

> It's an interesting idea, but wouldn't it be very hard to tell? Like if someone asked me how much of PSD is supported on GIMP (on a scale, say from 0 to 10), I would have no idea where we stand. We do have support, and we try to improve it regularly. We also accept patches with arms wide open. But how much of it is supported? No idea.

I'm not suggesting it would represent exactly how well a format is supported. You'd map rough semantic guidelines onto numbers (e.g. 100=designed for this file format, 30=can import but not save, 10=can extract partial information). Strict categories always get awkward, putting them on a scale allows you to be a bit fuzzy about it.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's discuss problems before solutions.

> Yeah the default application on same level of intent is a difficult question, which was why I was not really focusing on it. I'm not sure but it doesn't look like all distributions/desktop do the same thing currently. It would seem that some at least would just set the last installed software as default. This is definitely wrong often, but I can see also how it can make sense to some. I don't actually think there is a single right answer to this problem unfortunately.

Do you have any idea which distro/desktop prefers the last installed application? Maybe a better starting point is to work out what (if anything) does that, and if it's intentional.

I think the problem needs to be pinned down more precisely before we can consider any solution. You've presented some mysterious GIMP users. What desktops were they using? What distros? Were they new to desktop Linux, or old hands with established preferences? How often does this come up, and is it increasing or decreasing?

Changing a specification and getting everyone involved to adopt the changes is a long, difficult process. If there's any chance the problem can be solved (or sufficiently mitigated) by changing software without changing the desktop file spec, it's worth trying that first.

Best wishes,
Thomas
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