New `MimeType` fields in .desktop

[Mark Watts]

Hi Jehan Pagès,
I've been following the discussion the past few days, and I'm not sure
it will ultimately be productive along the current path, so I want to
offer an alternative that may be worth considering. While I do think
it's not unreasonable to add information about the "quality" or
"intent" to desktop files, I doubt whether adding to the desktop entry
*specification* is the best way to go about things at this point in
time. Instead, it might be better to add support in one or more
applications through patches, extensions, and the like, demonstrate
adoption and *then* standardize around those implementations. (If I
understand correctly, based on the excerpt of the desktop entry spec
below, there's no prohibition on adding entries outside of those
explicitly listed in the standard, so we're good there.) Starting from
applications rather than attempting to pre-specify has the advantage
that you'd both work out some of the hypotheticals discussed in this
thread and that you would more directly help the frustrated users
unable to express policies based on the putative "native format" of an
application.

> Basic format of the file
>
> [...]
>
> Compliant implementations MUST not remove any fields from the file, even if they don't support them. Such fields must be maintained in a list somewhere, and if the file is "rewritten", they will be included. This ensures that any desktop-specific extensions will be preserved even if another system accesses and changes the file.

-- 
Cheers,

Mark W.