Re: [Usability] An extended default applications dialog

[Matt Medland <matt medland gmail com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Christian Neumair wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 14.01.2007, 12:58 +0000 schrieb Matt Medland:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Christian Neumair wrote:
>>> Am Samstag, den 13.01.2007, 11:59 +0100 schrieb Christian Neumair:
>>>> Am Donnerstag, den 11.01.2007, 20:50 +0000 schrieb Matt Medland:
>>>>> I'm proposing that mime-type association be centralised in the
>>>>> Preferences>Preferred Applications area, since that seems the natural
>>>>> place that anyone would go to. This would, potentially, be useful for
>>>>> everyone.
>>>>>
>>>>> The spec is here:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/enhanced-preferred-apps
>>>>>
>>>>> and any comments or criticism would be appreciated.
>>>> I'm extremely in favor of the "MIME type categories" proposed in some
>>>> comments on the spec page, i.e. we'd have certain categories like
>>>> "Audio", "Images", "Plain Text", "Text Documents", "Spreadsheet" etc.
>>>>
>>>> Each category would provide a listing of MIME types that each
>>>> application has to support to be elegible for that category.
>>>>
>>>> The GUI must also allow to determine exceptions for particular MIME
>>>> types that are part of the category, else we're not flexible enough to
>>>> deal the requirements with specialized setups. The specialized MIME
>>>> selection allows to select all applications that can be used for the
>>>> MIME type in question.
>>> This is what I have in mind technically:
>>>
>>> The idea is to get rid of many of the "defaults.list" entries
>>> (/usr/share/applications/defaults.list), and associate category
>>> information with each MIME type. Applications could then register
>>> against categories, and are just stored in defaults.list (i.e. against
>>> special MIME types) when they are specialized or override the default
>>> handler. Specialized applications would for instance be your favorite
>>> Macromedia Flash Image Extraction Frobnicator.
>>>
>>> I'm currently hard-coding categories and MIME types in a python script,
>>> but we might end up with .desktop files that contain:
>>>
>>> [Category]
>>> DisplayName=Foo
>>> Name=foo
>>> MimeTypes=foo/bar;...;
>>>
>>> Note that we'd standardize the valid "Name" fields.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm attaching a little not yet demo application I wrote in python that
>>> can be used to play with the GUI. You can easily download it and run it.
>>>
>>> * Pro: Simple default application selection
>>>
>>> * Con: Many MIME types per category would make the "Details" entry very
>>> long. Either use a specialized dialog, or just list exceptions.
>>> Exceptions have the advantage that they do not list duplicate
>>> information.
>>>
>>> * Con: We use a combo box cell renderer in the tree view. Users might
>>> not be used to it.
>>>
>>> * Con: The current layout will make it impossible to have many MIME
>>> categories although it looks good. We'll hopefully find a solution,
>>> either tab based, or by having a layout like
>>>
>>>
>>> Default Foo Application:    [ Application Combo ] [ Details ]
>>> Default Bar Application:    [ Application Combo ] [ Details ]
>>> Default FooBar Application: [ Application Combo ] [ Details ]
>>>
>>>
>>> Please run the attached python script and give some feedback! :)
>>>
>>>
>> Wow, I can tell that you've put lots of effort into this. :)
>>
>> I really like your script, maybe you could put a scrollbar on the side
>> so that we could have more categories. Would there be anyway to only
>> allow one drop-down thing to be open at a time?
>>
>> I think that that gui would work really well once the few small teething
>> problems have been ironed out and it's been jazzed up a bit with some icons.
>>
>> Do you mind if I upload this to the bazaar branch that's attached to the
>> spec?
> 
> No, of course not (license: GPL or PD at your opinion); but I'm
> currently doing another implementation that is very similar to what I
> proposed above, i.e. it will only have a few toggles in the main dialog
> and a for each category a details dialog.
> 

Okay, thanks. I think I'll wait for the next implementation then.
There's a link to the current script on the wiki page anyhow.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFqj3Z2eHdgg4mgnERAssTAJ9dUZiU4bjaO72LmaVBKl2nlV5IrgCfbR0U
JsUyVJSBYX+VZmNmPGgHuTA=
=pp+J
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----