protocol handling spec?

[Lars Hallberg]

Dave Cridland wrote:

> On Mon Aug  9 10:25:28 2004, Lars Hallberg wrote:
>
>> As a user, i want the protocol to matter for witch app to start. 
>> Probably it's enuf for me to be able to say - for this protocol, 
>> *always* use this app.
>
> Yes, the scheme can be the only thing to look at. 'telnet' and 
> 'mailto', for instance, are likely to always start the same application.
>
> 'http', 'file', and 'imap' needn't, though - 'file' for the 
> 'localhost' case is very unlikely to do so, in particular.
>
> So I agree it's useful to be able to specify that, but I disagree that 
> this is all that's needed.

Sorry, I was unclear. I mean, besides the normal mimetype mapping, the 
ability to owerride it for some protocoll will probably be good enuf for 
me :-)

>> For exampel, I want gqview to start for jpeg images genaraly, but if 
>> it's a http uri I want firefox to start, so I esaly can brows related 
>> pages. I want firwfox even if it is a mediatype firefox don't handel 
>> internaly, just to get the dialogbox asking me wheter to download or 
>> start the 'normal' mimetype viewer! Becose all viewer don't have a 
>> 'save as' facility, and some viewers freqvently crach. If I download 
>> the file, I can try different viewers!
>
> What if it's an http URI referencing a DAV folder, or a Subversion 
> repository, though?

You are destroying my exampels :-D ... You can't know this stuff until 
retriving the uri and getting http headers I think. Or in some case even 
file mimetype and contents. I think I want my webbrowser started, but a 
webbrowser including a DAV and subversion functionality. Not realy...

But i dont want the desktop to download the uri, and then deside to tell 
the browser to do it again in the most commen case.

Rather have the browser download it and then tell somthing else to do it 
again in the more rare cases.

http can hav big latency, doing it twice *is* harmfull!

And, fore URI links in the desktop, it would be cool if it could 
remember it's a DAV/subversion resorce and start my prefered 
dav/subversion app right away.

This is *realy* a problem with the widespred practice of using http as 
transport for other services. The desctop can't realy tell. Think the 
browser will have to know what to do with this stuff, not nesecarly 
handel it, but know who can :-/ We can throw in SOAP for even more 
bubbels :-/

But, so far I'm hapy with firefox for all http. Thou i want to get 
firefox *not* to show a browser windows unless it has something to show 
in it :-)

If it's DAV or subversion, I can live with starting the app and paste in 
the URI, but geting the browser to handel or hand over this stuff is 
probably the long term goal. Having the desktop see the differens 
between different http folders (web folders, DAV folders, subversion 
folders) can't be else then hackish.

/LaH