Re: Registering MIME types and applications

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Fri, 2004-07-02 at 10:03 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-07-02 at 00:19, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > I'm trying to figure out what an application should do to register a new
> > MIME type with GNOME 2.6, and to register itself as an application that
> > is capable of opening that MIME type.
> > 
> > I have found the following techniques. Maybe there are more. I'd like to
> > know which of these are outdated and which are the new approved
> > techniques. Also, should an application register itself with multiple
> > (old and new) MIME-type systems?
> > 
> > 1. Registering the MIME-type by putting a .xml file in 
> > <prefix>/share/mime/packages, 
> > and running update-mime-database.
> > 
> > 2. Registering the application by putting an .applications file in 
> > <prefix>/share/application-registry/
> > 
> > 3. Registing the application by putting a .desktop file in 
> > <prefix>/share/applications/
> > 
> > 4. Registering the MIME-type by putting a .mime file in 
> > <prefix>/share/mime-info/
> > 
> > 5. Registering the application by putting a .keys file in 
> > <prefix>/share/mime-info/
> > 
> > I thought that 1, 2, and 3, were the new ways to do this, but it only
> > causes Nautilus to show the MIME-type (e.g. application/x-glom), but not
> > the MIME-type's name. And it does not know that it should launch glom to
> > open that file.
> 
> In addition to other peoples comments i'd like to add that we're working
> on a new freedesktop.org system that handles the mapping from mime type
> to application (in addition to the current common file -> mimetype
> system). It will involve something like adding a mimetypes=.... to the
> desktop file, and running some updated similar to update-mime-database
> to extract this into a global mimetype -> desktop file list.
> 
> This is not finalized yet, but I hope it'll be done soon.

Excellent. Thanks for the replies.

I guess that, at the moment, an application should register itself in
both the old way and the new way.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com