Re: updated MIME plan

[Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

On Don, 2004-04-29 at 22:08, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch> writes:
> 
> > On Fre, 2004-04-23 at 22:28, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> > > I just updated the proposed MIME plan at
> > > http://www.gnome.org/~jrb/files/mime/
> > 
> > That looks very promising, cool. One thing I'd add to the "Add new
> > Application" and the "Open with other Application" dialogs is a list of
> > known applications, like we already have it in the "Run Application"
> > dialog. I suppose that many users don't know all (or any) file names of
> > the executables, so it's IMO wise to add such a list. Perhaps it even
> > makes sense to show the list always (not as in the current "Run
> > Application" dialog).
> 
> I specifically didn't add the list when doing the mockups.  The
> expectation is that most applications that are able to register
> themselves with the application menu are also able to register
> themselves with the correct mime-type.  Listing a large number of
> applications would increase the noise of the dialog, without actually
> providing value.

In most cases you're absolutely right but there are situations I can
think of where your argument doesn't hold. Let's assume I want to open a
file in ghex, shouldn't this be possible without entering "ghex2"? And
no, I don't want "Open with Hex Editor" in the context menu of all my
files ;) Ok, this is not an example that many users affect but it is
valid for some.

An other not uncommon situation is that either a file's mime type has
been wrongly recognized or an application hasn't correctly registered
itself with all fitting file types. In this situation shared-mime-info
resp. the application should be fixed, of course, but it could very well
be that it is already fixed and the user just hasn't got the most
current shared-mime-info. Shall we let the user alone in this case?

If the list of known applications wouldn't be shown always (as in the
"Run Application" dialog) it wouldn't increase the noise of the dialog
at all but add value in some cases.

What'd you think?

Jürg