Re: gnome_url_show proposal

[Frank Worsley <fworsley shaw ca>]

> I care, the thing is that I don't have any really constructive
> suggestions. My feeling is that to move GnomeDesktopItem into the
> platform it could use more review/love, but I don't know who will have
> time to do that; I think gnome_url_show() kind of sucks as a concept
> and should just be handled as part of a working MIME system (see
> recent preferred apps thread on usability@), but we don't have that in
> the near term (though hopefully jrb or someone will get to it in the
> GNOME 2.4 timeframe); it also seems that doing the parameter
> substitution etc. should be supported by some API that doesn't require
> creating a desktop item, but I don't know who will implement that
> either. Finally yes it should probably be in GTK or something but I
> don't think we'll have a good enough idea what it would look like
> there until we firm up the MIME system and get that on a lower level
> also, so we can't address it that way for GTK 2.4.
> 
> Basically, no I don't think it sounds particularly right, or at least
> it isn't clear to me that it's right, but it doesn't seem likely we'll
> have anything better in a 2.4 timeframe, maybe for 2.6.

I think there does need to be a function like gnome_url_show so
applications can easily display a file. This is important for the run
dialog, could also be used to display the Gnome URL buttons when they
are clicked and could even be used by Nautilus when a file is clicked.

Instead of having this in libgnome, maybe there should be a
gnome_vfs_show_url convenience function?

I don't know all that is wrong with the current MIME system, but there
seems to be a lot of infrastructure in place in GnomeVFS. Problem is
that it's a PITA to use currently. Look at all the code I had to write
just to open a file in its default app.

So what if I added this as a convenience function to GnomeVFS and made
gnome_url_show just call that convenience function and also add support
for the gconf stuff? I can probably also do the parameters expansion if
I copy some code from GnomeDesktopItem. It should hopefully not be too
much work. That way libgnome just has the added GnomeVFS dependency.

Would people be happier with that solution?

- Frank