Re: gmc vfs question

[gandalf pobox com]

On 7 Feb 1999, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > In my particular case I prefer to use gxtar, rather than the tar vfs, and
> > would like to make it easy for others who also prefer gxtar to be able to
> > use it directly from gmc.
> 
> The user can install its own key.  

I did create a gxtar.keys which I placed in share/mime-info, it works
great for tar.bzip2 since gmc does not already handle these itself, but
it is ignored for all the other types, since gmc handles them internally.

> I do not know how to have two system-installed files that provide the
> same functionality though.

you mean like if mc.keys and gxtar.keys both define the same type, which
do you use?  This is an issue.  You could always prompt, but I think that
would be pretty ugly.  Another option is to assume that if the user
installed something they want to use it, and give mc.keys the
lowest priority.  Another idea is the MS way, which would be to have a
single file that is checked (say just mc.keys) and other apps have to
replace the existing entry with their own.  This is of course much more
difficult for the individual developers, since it is a lot more work than
simply creating a blah.keys file and copying it into share/mime-info.

However at the moment, at least for me, this is not the problem.  The
problem is that if there is a vfs for a particular file type (like tar) 
gmc ignores even its own mc.keys file, and uses the vfs.  This is the
behavior I'd like to make optional.  I haven't had a chance to actually
look at the gmc code, perhaps I will tonight.

Thanks
-chris

*************************************************************
Christopher Rogers      Stevens Institute of Technology
gandalf@pobox.com       http://www.pobox.com/~gandalf
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