Deep Linking for the free desktop

[Elsie Hupp]

I have an iPhone (which I dutifully hate), and part of how deep-linking URL handlers work is that there is a popup prompt directly *asking the user* whether they want to allow a particular app to open the URL, with options like “Yes”, “No”, “Always”, and “Never”, more or less in the same way that the operating system prompts the user whether or not they want to allow an application to receive the pasted contents of the clipboard.

In other words, I assume the way deep-linking URL handlers would work in an XDG setting would be with Flatpak portals, which are generally implemented with this sort of prompt.

As for things like Atom feeds… wouldn’t these have a MIME type? If so, wouldn’t this already be handled by a given web browser’s MIME type handling? In the context of Flatpak portals, then, I assume there is already something along the lines of which application should be summoned to handle a given data type and whether it should be able to do so without user confirmation (i.e. “Yes”/“No”/“Always”/“Never”).

Anyway, yes, Flatpak is an XDG standard, but they might have their own mailing list that might be more useful for requesting a feature such as this:

https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/flatpak

Hope this is helpful!

Elsie Hupp

> On Feb 12, 2024, at 8:35 AM, Soni L. <fakedme+xdg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> what would deep linking (like the android/ios feature) look like for the free desktop?
> 
> obviously the android/ios feature is explicitly designed to restrict the kinds of apps that can be deep link handlers (so e.g. only the official twitter app can handle twitter links), which seems very anti-free desktop. so what would a free desktop alternative look like?
> 
> the point of deep links is that the same link works both in the browser and in an app.
> 
> also, would it be possible to extend them to, say, atom feeds? those traditionally only open in an app, but it'd be neat if they could also open in the browser.
> 
> (disclaimer: we make fedilinks https://fedilinks.org/ and it is our goal to become this, our goal is to be "deep linking for the free desktop". but alternative proposals are welcome.)