RE: proposal for MIME behavior in GNOME

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> > One question though. You say
> [snip]
> > Doesn't this mean that all unknown files, which happen to 
> be formatted 
> > as XML, will have a primary application of gedit or 
> similar, without 
> > the user being aware that that is probably inappropriate. 
> If it was a 
> > binary format then the user would quickly see that he 
> didn't have the 
> > necessary application installed .
> 
> I'd say that most applications which are going to save data 
> to XML chunks are going to have MIME entries.  If the user 
> doesn't have an application which can interpret the data, 
> gedit is as good it gets.

How is that MIME entry going to get onto my computer? If I receive a
document in my email that should be opened by some newish application that I
don't have, I'll end up looking at raw XML without Nautilus saying that I
probably need to install a new application. Just because the application
author very wisely decided to use an XML format.

This could be partially solved with a regular update of the shared mime-type
database, without reinstalling my distro, but I don't think that's very
likely to happen.

Maybe we can look at the XML document's declaration?

Murray Cumming
www.murrayc.com
murrayc usa net