[Gimp-developer] Mime type application/x-xcf in /etc/mime.types vs image/x-xcf in gimp.desktop

[Joel Hockey <joelhockey chromium org>]

When I use GIMP in Chrome OS Linux environment, it does not automatically
associate *.xcf files with GIMP since there is a mismatch between the
/usr/share/applications/gimp.desktop file which registers to handle mime
types including image/x-xcf and the system /etc/mime.types file which
associates extension xcf with mime type application/x-xcf.

I'm one of the developers on Chrome OS.  I believe most linux desktops are
using the xdg shared-mime-info database rather than /etc/mime.types, but we
haven't yet implemented that.
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/shared-mime-info/-/blob/47ca1dc530d356336ffe1b7a45dc5dc8f0e528ca/data/freedesktop.org.xml.in#L5568

I am planning to request debian media-types package to update their
/etc/mime.types to use image/x-xcf rather than application/x-xcf which will
fix things for me if they are happy to change.

Does anyone know the history why these are different, or would there be any
issue if /etc/mime.types did change?

Thanks,
Joel