Re: Preferred Applications revisited

[Sebastien Bacher <seb128 debian org>]

Le mercredi 19 octobre 2005 à 00:03 +0200, Luca Cavalli a écrit :
> Hi,
> I'm doing some work on gnome-default-applications-properties
> capplet and I'm here with a fresh new subscription to this list to ask
> for comments, suggestions and advices. 

hi,

First thanks for working on that!

> You can see what I have done so
> far at bug http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171872 (not too
> much indeed, but the work proceeds well :). 

The screenshot looks nice, better than the current dialog.

> I plan to do the work in
> two steps. Step one should rework the current applet as it is now, so
> that only web browsers, mail readers and terminal emulators can be
> selected by the user. 

Right. I've some question/points to mention about this. Opinions on that
are welcome:
- there is some code for a text-editor tab. Should this one just be
trashed from the CVS?
- the ubuntu bugzilla got a bug some day ago complaining about the
option for the preferred terminal emulator since the panel menu entry
doesn't respect this setting by example. Any suggestion on how to change
that?
- the current code use a static list of applications. Does somebody know
if there there already was some discussion about using desktop file for
that? Like epiphany using "Feature: web_browser" or "Feature:
text_editor" for gedit by example? That would make possible to list the
available Browser/Music Player/Editor/... according to what you have
installed.

> doesn't ship its own news reader, so I didn't add it to the list). With
> respect to text editors and audio and video players, which are
> controlled by the mime type system, what is the correct way to handle
> them? Should they be really added to
> gnome-default-applications-properties or is it better to handle them
> only via Nautilus "open with" interface on single mime type basis?

Good question. There is the some such issues with the preferred browser
by example:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308803

http:// and html files opened by nautilus have different applications
associated which creates some confusion for user.

This capplet seems to be a correct place for a preferred
music/photo/video/... player to me. Users will probably expect one place
to set all these settings. Maybe using some tabs like the
gnome-volume-manager dialog: "Internet", "Multimedia", ...


Cheers,

Sebastien Bacher