Re: Proposed XDG Mime spec and gnome-vfs

[Shahms King <shahms shahms com>]

> What do people think of this?  The actual process of going from
> file->mime-type is pretty generic, so I think I can fit it in without
> any external API changes.  The one big problem is that on-disk formats
> will change, which means that we'd need to consider a portability layer
> there.  Are there any requirements beyond the current system that we
> need to consider?  Also, are there any problems with the current API
> that make this plan seem unsound?

Not that I'm an expert on this in anyway, but the spec seems to be much
cleaner than the current GNOME MIME system (not that that's saying much,
but hey), it's extensible in any number of ways, as well as being pretty
simple for applications to install user-specific or system-wide MIME
data.  I took a look at it a while ago with the aim of implementing
pieces of it before I got distracted by real life, and there weren't any
glaring mistakes I could spot ;-)

As to the mime-type => handler system, I (personally) think we have a
workable system for all but the "default" app already with the
applications:// vfolder stuff.  It should be relatively straightforward
for applications to indicate in their .desktop file what kinds of
mime-types they understand (possibly using globs like image/*).  Adding
a new applications/custom handler would have the benefit of installing a
.desktop file in the appropriate place to allow for integrating that
same app in the menus, run dialog, etc.

-- 
Shahms King <shahms shahms com>