<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Hi!<br></div><div><br></div><div>I didn't want to answer this email, but some parts are so wrong that I couldn't stop (<a href="https://xkcd.com/386/">https://xkcd.com/386/</a> 🤣).</div><div><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 4:13 PM Bollinger, John C <<a href="mailto:John.Bollinger@stjude.org">John.Bollinger@stjude.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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On Wednesday, February 17, 2021 6:30 AM, Thomas Kluyver <<a href="mailto:thomas@kluyver.me.uk" target="_blank">thomas@kluyver.me.uk</a>> wrote:
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<div>Distinguishing things like 'native' and 'equivalent intent' filetypes seems tempting, but I suspect it would end up with a lot of awkward grey areas. If this is a problem worth solving, I'd be more inclined to make a numeric priority scale, something like
the shared-mime-info database uses for assigning mimetypes to files (which allows e.g. ODT files to be recognised as ODT rather than general zip files).</div>
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<div>The problem here is that the application to be used to open files of a particular type is not an inherent characteristic of the file type</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Maybe not all formats, but for most, of course it is. If you have a XCF or PSD file, of course it is a work file. You could just want to display it, but that's the exception. When you want an image for display, you will usually export it to a display image format (JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF… whatever is out there these days).</div><div>Of course, you can edit from a JPEG/PNG and many people do (me included). It's completely fine to do this (which is why it is in the open list) but it's not what these files are made for (they are lossy, yes even PNG is hugely lossy compared to a work file; they have countless limitations, etc.). These are final output files not work files, often not even good source files (pro photographers try not to start from JPEG, they start from the RAW files).<br></div><div><br></div><div>If you send someone a text for viewing, it could be a PDF for instance. You send the ODT or OOXML when you want them to edit it. Sure many people just send ODT/OOXML, and sure you can edit PDF. But that's not the intent.</div><div>Same as you send someone a generated PDF, not a LaTeX file, by the way.<br></div><div><br></div><div>If you send someone a .blend file, it's to open in Blender (or maybe another 3D software which supports importing from Blender format), not to view the 3D object or the edited scene. If you want to just show a video to someone, you render a .mov/avi/mp4 or whatever other end-formats.</div><div><br></div><div>Saying the application (or types of application) is not an inherent characteristic of the file type is really wrong for most file formats out there (there are some exceptions of course). Most formats definitely have intents associated with them. There are formats for editing, formats for streaming/speed viewing, formats for quality viewing, and so on. Moreover even within a given broad intent, you get more specialized sub-category formats (if you take video formats for viewing for instance, there are so many formats specialized in some specific fields). Most formats are usually even created to fill in a specific intent and sometimes specific applications are created to specialize in the given intent.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div>, nor of the set of available applications that can handle that type. That's why the user has no good reason to expect
stability of default application where no specific one is configured. And it's also why the user is mischaracterizing the problem if they claim that the GIMP has taken over file associations for a given file type -- installing a desktop file simply does not
do that, because desktop files express no policy.</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>People having an issue and answering them that they are "mischaracterizing the problem" is one of the worst responses possible. Basically "don't fix the software, fix the user"?</div><div><br></div><div>In particular when here the issue is very visible. The desktop format is much too broad as to what consists of a MIME type support. It is obvious no desktop out there will be able to make reasonable default choices with such basic information.</div><div><br></div><div>I never thought much so far (until we got a recent report about it), but I do recall I had similar issues by the past. I remembered times when opening .txt. file would open them in LibreOffice and I had to fix it manually. I remembered times when some software native format ended up opened by another application whose native format was another and which didn't even have a complete support of the other format. And so on.<br></div><div><br></div><div>So no, the user did not mischaracterize anything when one thought that there was a problem. The computer cannot be in the person's head to handle special cases, but we can definitely improve the default situation, because yes both application formats definitely have intent built-in within themselves.</div><div><br></div><div>Jehan<br></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
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<div>Another approach to the stability issue (e.g. GIMP 'taking over' the JPEG mimetype) is for the desktop to fix it: if you open a JPEG file and there isn't already a default application for that, store whatever it uses as the default application, so it won't
change unless the user manually changes the association or uninstalls that application. I think that could be done without changing any specs.</div>
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<div>Yes. This would be a manifestation of "better tools" such as I suggested above. It would be an appropriate way to address the issue from the XDG side.</div>
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<div>John</div>
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<div id="gmail-m_-2918992981554822728divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt" face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> xdg <<a href="mailto:xdg-bounces@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank">xdg-bounces@lists.freedesktop.org</a>> on behalf of Thomas Kluyver <<a href="mailto:thomas@kluyver.me.uk" target="_blank">thomas@kluyver.me.uk</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, February 17, 2021 6:30 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> xdg <<a href="mailto:xdg@lists.freedesktop.org" target="_blank">xdg@lists.freedesktop.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: New `MimeType` fields in .desktop</font>
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Caution: External Sender. Do not open unless you know the content is safe.</div>
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<div>On Tue, 16 Feb 2021, at 23:04, Bollinger, John C wrote:<br>
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But that does not imply that some applications should be able to claim to be more equal than others with respect to particular file types.<br>
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<div>I think Jehan's idea is that applications should be able to claim to be *less* equal than others for a given mimetype, i.e. that GIMP could declare 'I can open JPEGs, but you should probably use something else by default'. Obviously, if the user explicitly
set GIMP as the default handler for image/jpeg, it would override this priority.<br>
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<div>Distinguishing things like 'native' and 'equivalent intent' filetypes seems tempting, but I suspect it would end up with a lot of awkward grey areas. If this is a problem worth solving, I'd be more inclined to make a numeric priority scale, something like
the shared-mime-info database uses for assigning mimetypes to files (which allows e.g. ODT files to be recognised as ODT rather than general zip files).<br>
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<div>Another approach to the stability issue (e.g. GIMP 'taking over' the JPEG mimetype) is for the desktop to fix it: if you open a JPEG file and there isn't already a default application for that, store whatever it uses as the default application, so it won't
change unless the user manually changes the association or uninstalls that application. I think that could be done without changing any specs.<br>
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<div>Thomas<br>
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