Re: applications <-> mime-types

[Dan Hensley <dan hensley worldnet att net>]

Michael Gratton wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> If this is an old thread or is FAQ'ed anywhere, please feel free to
> flame, but I've got a few thoughts regarding a possible better way of
> using mime-types.
>
> Currently, a particular mime-type and hence corrosponding file has an
> application mapped to it for various actions, open, view and edit. When
> double-cicking on a particular file, in MC for example, the application
> is launched with the filename passed as an argument. A mime-type's
> actions are mapped to a particular application. This is simlar, as I
> understand it, to Windows handling of file types and seems to work fine
> for some cases.
>
> The big problem as I see it occurs when multiple applications are
> suitable for performing the same action. For example, I may want to open
> an html file in either Communicator or Emacs, or view a jepg in XV, the
> Gimp or EE. I realise I can overcome this by dragging and dropping, but
> I don't want to have countless application icons on my desktop, drawers
> on my panel or applications open (assuming they even *support* drag and
> drop) as this leads to a messy, over-crowded desktop. I personally
> prefer working in a document-centric manner, not application-centric.
>
> I think a much better way of handling this would be to specify what
> mime-types an application is capable of handling. For example,
> Communicator would be registered as being able to open/view html and
> jpegs but edit html only. Emacs would be registered as being able to
> open/view/edit html and the Gimp would be registered as being able to
> open/view/edit jpegs. MC or other file managers can then display
> appropriate choices for the desired action. Taking it one step futher,
> multiple actions could be dispensed with altogether as the concept would
> effectively be made obselete.
>
> This method would also centralize adminstration of an application's
> properties in Gnome's environment, as all configuration could be done
> from the menu-editor, instead of the menu-editor *and* the mime-type
> capplet. A small savings, sure, but I think it is far more intuitative
> and convenient to have it all in one place.
>
> How would it be done? Good question. I'm still getting familiar with
> Gnome so I don't think I could supply a good answer right now, but maybe
> somone else could?
>
> What does everyone think?
>
> Mike.

    YES!!  That's exactly what I've been thinking about, and I was going to
post something along these same lines.  But you said it well.  What you're
describing is exactly how OS/2 does it, and I think it works extremely
well.  I can't stand the way Windows does it, because there are a lot of
reasons why I might want to have more than one application assigned to a
particular file type.  It's one of the things I truly miss about OS/2 (I
still use it occasionally, but I'm in Linux 95% of the time now).  Here's
an example.  In Windows, all my .c files are automatically associated with
msdev.  But what if I want to take a quick look at it in Notepad?
<SHIFT><RMB>, <Open With>, <scroll>, <select Notepad>, <Open>.  Very
inefficient.
    In OS/2, when I right-click on a file icon, I get an Open As entry at
the top.  Each type is assigned a default application, so that
double-clicking on it opens it in that application.  But if I click on the
arrow beside Open As, I get a list of potential applications.  Then I just
select the one I want.
    I would LOVE it if Gnome worked along the same lines.  IMHO, this would
be an extremely valuable enhancement.  In OS/2, I had set a file type of *
to be open by the editor.  That way if it found an unknown file type (i.e.
README--no extension), it would by default open it with the editor.  I've
been trying to figure out how to do that with Gnome, and so far I haven't
been able to.

Dan