Re: Preferred Applications revisited, part two

[Sebastien Bacher <seb128 debian org>]

On dim, 2005-11-20 at 16:01 +0100, Luca Cavalli wrote:

> Attached to bug #171872 [1] you can find a tarball with the source code
> of the applet and a screenshot of the gui.

Hi,

I've just tried it, and it looks great!

> * Applications info are now stored in an external XML file. 

Nice. Do you have a dtd or some explanation on the format used
somewhere?


> Paolo Borelli (pbor) suggested me also another nice idea: to use .desktop
> files stored somewhere like
> $XDG_DATA_DIRS/gnome-default_apps/web_browsers,
> $XDG_DATA_DIRS/gnome-default_apps/mail_readers, and so on... This will
> also remove the libxml dependency. It is not as Sebastien suggested
> (using .desktop files from /usr/sharep/applications/, extended with an
> entry to specify the application category, i.e. "Feature: web_browser"
> for apps capable to open url links), but a sort of. Comments are
> welcome.

What is the advantage of this over my suggestion? We already have
desktop files, is there any need to duplicate files/translations/...?


> * there is a tooltip which informs users about the %s option, when they
> use custom commands.

Nice. Could you write the command on the selected action for non-custom
choices like the current capplet does too? It can be useful for people
to figure what it does exactly. 


> * This is a first (second, to be honest, the first had a little bug)
> release and code needs to be cleaned up, maybe a bit reorganized... I'm
> waiting for your suggestions and patches.

Nice work. I've not looked on the code yet, but the capplet is already
much nicer than the previous one.

Some questions:
- is that a new capplet or modifications over the previous one?
- could you make a patch for the CVS with your changes?
- does changing the web browser have an impact on the application
opening html file too? Some users find confusing to have different
browsers used when opening an http URI or using nautilus.

We should also decide something on the format to use to list the
applications. I would like to have comments of the other control-center
maintainers on this.
We have the choice to code the list, use an xml description, use new
desktop files, or modify the current desktop files for this.


Cheers,

Sebastien Bacher